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digging for bones...

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published by Factotum

December 2012. issue 55

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Archive Tombola. Volume 1.

the

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A miscellany of obscure ulster artifacts Vol.1

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NO.03

NO MORE LEPRECHAUNS

Book. Author: Ned Nicoll.

Publisher: New English Library Ltd.1975

This book was presented to me in a clear plastic bag –to keep the bookworm in it from spreading I was told. As time went on, I was glad to have it segregated from my own belongings, oozing as it did a mixture of seminal fluid and female suffering. As a novel it’s good for Belfast but bad for women. And it’s possible that this is a fair reflection on the 1950s when the Belfast part is set.

The title should tell you something but given that the title was ‘no more leprechauns’ I couldn’t for the life of me work out what. So I was going on the back cover which promised ‘a biting novel about young people – their adolescent love affairs, their fighting, their poverty’. I’m optimistic by nature so whilst I wasn’t convinced, I was hoping that it might be something along the lines of Mary Larkin’s kitchen sink dramas with a harder hitting edge to it.

And for the first part of it, that’s what it is.

Two young boys groping and grasping their way through the dance halls and courting sites of Belfast in the 50s. There’s a surprising amount of sex and almost-sex, though this may be showing my country girl roots – maybe in 1950s Belfast teenagers were copping off against gable walls but I’m pretty sure they mostly weren’t doing it in Omagh in the 1980s. These boys seem to have no trouble getting girls, and given their lack of personal hygiene (did 1950s boys really not change their underwear after wet dreams?) it was hard to believe they were that attractive.

The Belfast that appears in this part of the novel is the best thing about it – the descriptions of the city are loving and I cheered with the appearance of the Plaza as a Duke Ellington type of place considering the psychobilly hangout it became in the 80s. The description of Billy thumping his lambeg furiously outside St. Patrick’s Church on Little Donegal Street raised a wry smile. Plus ça change.

But Belfast soon disappears as Billy and Danny (his Catholic counterpart) join the British Navy and have the expected confrontation and reconciliation that is the cornerstone of Northern Irish novels. You’d think this would be the end of the novel but no, this happens barely a quarter of the way through.

And that’s when it gets really strange. Billy disappears entirely, to resurface briefly as an RUC man with a gloriously normal pregnant wife, who is killed on a back road in Strabane a dozen pages from the end. Danny emerges from the Navy in the 1960s to become a very successful pornographer. As you do. From here on we are firmly in bad sex territory. And there’s a lot of bad sex. An awful awful lot of bad sex.

And then it gets worse. Again. With the story of Danny’s love interest Joanne who has had a lot of even worse sex. Coercion. Rape.

Drug assisted rape. STDs. A biker gang group sex initiation. The STD drug rapists getting their comeuppance at the hands of the biker gang was the dramatic catharsis. How did Joanne feel

about all this? Well there’s a question you’d think would be answered in a novel. Not in this one.

She cries a bit though.

But don’t think it’s over just yet. There’s violent porn, porn smuggling from Denmark, IRA gunrunning and boat orgies featuring sexy IRA women. Sexy IRA women leading Danny around by…well let’s just say I’ve never heard it called a leprechaun before. Followed by a brief return to Belfast to see the Troubles close up. It did finish eventually. With the threat of a prequel featuring the missing Billy’s story. Which as far as I can tell didn’t come to pass. It’s possible though that this could have been a much better story. I don’t think it’s possible that it could have been worse in any case.

Leprechauns always seemed creepy to me, even the cuddly student leprechaun that followed my friend around aping his every move for a joke on the day of his retirement. This book hasn’t helped that. It’s a long time since a novel made me feel physically sick. I’m not sure if it was some kind of effect from the bookworm treatment or the book itself. It would be easy to dismiss it as kitchy rubbish but the feminist in me struggles against that simplicity. It’s not just bad, it’s dangerously, creepily bad. It’s the kind of bad that makes you look nervously over your shoulder on a dark night. The kind of bad that makes you briefly hate men. Some books deserve to die.

This is one of them.

By Emma McKenna

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NO.11

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THE MAGPIE

Periodical. Edited by Alf S.Moore. Published 1898.

The Magpie: A Journal of Humour and Satire was published weekly from an office at 9 Gresham Street, its first issue dated 10 September 1898, sixteen pages long, price one penny. The cover declares it was edited by “Nomad”, otherwise known as Alf S. Moore, who’d first come to prominence writing for Ireland’s Saturday Night a few years before, and in decades to come went on to be an authority on Old Belfast and a linen correspondent for the News Letter and the American magazine Linens and Domestics. But for now he’s a 27-year-old journalist with a fondness for the phrase “’Nuff said”, trying his hand at a satirical magazine.

Humour, especially topical humour, struggles to travel, and without detailed knowledge of what’s being satirised any current reader will probably be as baffled as I was. The Magpie is heavily focused on local politics – the Improvement Committee of Belfast City Council comes in for a lot of stick for the state of sanitation in the city, the Lord Mayor, Sir James Henderson, is mocked for his vanity in liking to have his photo taken at the slightest provocation, and Nomad gleefully reports that a dispute between two local government bodies over an appointment means that no rates are being collected in Aughnacloy.

The first issue includes a piece called ‘After the Holidays: The City Academy’, a story about the beginning of term at a school where the headmaster is called Henderson and a new boy, Dixon Junior, has just joined. Fortunately the opening gossip column, “About Town”, includes the story about the photogenic Lord Mayor and the election to the City Council of a seriousminded 23-year-old called Daniel Dixon, so I can decode some of it. Striking how similar it is to the “Coalition Academy” newsletters, written by the head, Mr. Cameron, and the ineffectual and sidelined deputy head, Mr Clegg, currently running in Private Eye. Everything in The Magpie is published under pseudonyms. “Thermo” writes the ‘City Chatter’ business column. “The New Man” writes topical poems and a regular observational column, ‘Flies in Amber’. “Kynos” writes ‘Nuisances’, in which he rants about different kinds of people who annoy him. “Vero” writes a football column, ‘Leather Shots’, and “Captain Culture” writes a horse-racing column, ‘Turf Topics’. “Jimmy” writes the theatre column, ‘From the Stalls’, which opens with a polite disclaimer that The Magpie does not accept complementary tickets, and there are regular interviews with theatrical and operatic stars, usually with photos. “Cynical C. Serpent” and “Alf Resco” are other names frequently credited. There’s a regular column called ‘More Serious’, in which deceased notables are memorialised and important political issues are discussed straight. Although the magazine bills itself as “A London Magazine in Ireland”, Irish issues beyond local government in Ulster are rarely addressed. The Boer War occupies the ‘More Serious’ column for months at a stretch, but either the Home Rule issue is on the back burner at this time, or the editors and writers have no interest in it.

The early issues have a smattering of spot cartoons signed “LAH”, and issue 7 begins a new feature, ‘The Magpie’s Familiar Faces’, a regular full page caricature initially drawn by Matt Sandford. Other cartoonists, including “Blimey” (who may also be Sandford) and “Phiz” (who isn’t,

and isn’t Hablot Knight Brown, who illustrated Dickens books under the name “Phiz”, either – he died in 1882), also provide caricatures for the feature, but the best of the bunch is the superlative David Wilson, whose work appears from October 1999. While the other cartoonists are happy with a humorously recognisable likeness, Wilson’s caricatures are stylishly drawn in a variety of brush and pen techniques, more extreme in their exaggeration of facial features and posture, and include all the surreal visual symbolism we expect from a political cartoon. I was particularly taken with the one with Cecil Rhodes caricatured as a clueless pillar box, with the sword-brandishing Boer leader Paul Krueger stalking suburbia behind his back. Wilson redesigned the whole magazine in March 1900, drawing new logos for most of the regular columns in an Art Nouveau cartoon style.

Nomad’s name disappeared from the editor credit on the masthead in June 1899, replaced a few issues later by “Argonaut”, and the last time his name appears anywhere in the magazine is in July. I couldn’t find any explanation for his departure, but I do know another magazine, Nomad’s Weekly, started about this time. I’ve only seen issues from 1902, but they’re very similar to The Magpie, down to the ‘About Town’ gossip column that starts it off and the full page Matt Sandford cartoon. A couple of years earlier, in December 1900, The Magpie had relaunched itself as The Belfast Critic, expanding its theatre and sports coverage and reducing the satirical content, and no doubt Nomad took the opportunity to resurrect some of its discarded features. Nomad’s Weekly lasted until 1914. The Belfast Critic, as far as I can tell, closed in July 1902.

By Patrick Brown

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NO.13

NO.14

THE BONEFIRE

A PILLOWCASE PATENT

Play. Written by Gerald McLarnon. 1958.

With the atavistic spirit of Ulster politics abroad, burning offices, protest, irreducible moral certainty and the like, a timely trot to the archives brings to our consdieration The Bonefire. It’s a play written by a now near forgotten playwright Gerald McLarnon in 1958. McLarnon, who grew up near Belfast, was a moderately successful dramatist, who later converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and was a collaborator with eccentrically bouffanted composer, Sir John Tavener.

The play was produced from the 18th August of that year by the now defunct Ulster Group Theatre and ran for five nights in the Grand Opera House. The cast included Colin Blakely, James Ellis, Maurice O’Callaghan, Elizabeth Begley, and the late, great JG Devlin. Director for this production was Sir Tyrone Guthrie, at the time one of the leading stage directors in the world.

The play, which is delivered in two acts, was a treatise on sectarianism, small town mentalities and highly strung loving. Willy McNulty, grammar school progeny of the town’s pharmacist, returns from a year in jail for apparently blinding a local catholic Merchant Navy man, Davy Hanna over the head of the local rich girl, Vanessa. The day of his return is the 12th July, a notable date in the local calendar. The locals, mouth-breathing bigots to a man and woman have prepared a monster ‘boney’, with added tar, which will burn through the night to welcome home the village’s wronged hero.

The second act sees the real story come out, that Hanna has merely played blind, that Vanessa doesn’t really love Willy, but still loves Hanna, that Hanna and she cannot be together because of the divisions in their society. They make a pact to end it all by running into the bonefire that night. Vanessa’s father, however, intercepts her fateful run, and Hanna is left to burn alone. He is brought to die in the front room of McNulty’s father’s house, and his mother leads her Protestant neighbours in prayer as he slips into a better world.

The play is written at such a hysterical pitch, that the modern audience would have trouble differentiating it from a musical without songs, with people rushing on from stage left shouting ‘here comes the fenian whelp now, Mr Kyle.’ It’s rough, funny in places, uneven in terms of pacing, and constantly uses the lambeg drum to replace real tension. Vanessa is extraordinary, Lady Macbeth from somewhere near Lurgan, if you will, who, after the climactic scene, becomes a poetic wraith: ‘I should weep blood at the sight of you, I know that, but I can’t, I can’t’.

The main resonance of the play is the controversy that it arose. With Guthrie on board as director, the Group was taking the play to the Edinburgh Festival that year, which caused complaint that this was not a fit representation of ‘modern Ulster’ in 1958. Chief amongst these voices was that of Alderman Cecil McKee, Belfast Lord Mayor, Unionist MP and brother of Richie McKee, who was the Chairman of CEMA, the forerunner of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and the direct funders of the Ulster Group Theatre.

A Councillor Horan commented: ‘I can say that we are quite annoyed at the play. There is no hatred between Roman Catholics and Protestants as depicted in the play, and I do

not think it is fair that it should be allowed to go to the Edinburgh Festival.’

The play was deemed by other Belfast Corporation members as a slur on the Orange Order, and McKee gave a strong critique of the play, the premiere at the Grand Opera House he had attended, describing two of the female protestant characters as ‘sluts’, while the only catholic female character was ‘a living saint’. He directly asked the Ulster Group Theatre, Guthrie and McLarnon to delete specific lines, which Guthrie answered by saying if that there was even one alteration he would remove his name from the script. The Festival effectively said no Guthrie, no show, and that was that.

At the same time CEMA, secretly told the Northern Irish cabinet of the time that they had instructed the Ulster Group Theatre to keep separate accounts for The Bonefire and the rest of it’s work. They could not censure the play itself, but the UGT were made aware that CEMA would force bankruptcy if public funds were used to finance the production.

Interestingly, the Ulster Group Theatre’s management had originally suggested Boyd’s Shop by St John Ervine, a much more jolly rendering of Ulster life, where nobody is blinded or throws themselves into fires, but Guthrie and The Edinburgh Festival insisted on The Bonefire being the presentation. Guthrie’s actions in saving the play as he saw envisioned it, was a watershed for theatre and the arts in general in Belfast.

It was in 1959 that the UGT attempted to mount a production of Sam Thompson’s Over the Bridge, which was an even more incendiary attack on the sectarian working conditions in the shipyards. In that case Richie McKee, Cecil’s brother, directly attempted to quash the production, leading to Jimmy Ellis and the proposed cast, some of whom had worked on The Bonefire, to put on an independent production at the Empire Theatre, which stood where the twinkling cavern of the Victoria Square is today.

Over the Bridge is a superior play perhaps, but it’s possible to argue that The Bonefire, and Guthrie and McLarnon’s stance in opposing political censorship of the play allowed the artistic community here the confidence to risk money and careers in putting on Over the Bridge.

It would appear that the McKee brothers, having been unable to stymie The Bonefire, were determined to ensure that this new ‘slur’ didn’t even make it to the stage.

Political censorship of the arts, the nature of freedom of expression are still issues that are alive in today’s society. What The Bonefire did however, was encourage the acceptance of the artistic community in Belfast of the idea that difficult subjects, the things hiding in the shadows, were the things they needed to show on the stage.

By Hugh Odling-Smee

Patent. 1903. Thomas Somerset, David Clugston Hutchinson and Henry Edward Turkington.

This item is a patent registered almost exactly 99 years ago, in December 1903, by three Belfast gentlemen, Thomas Somerset, David Clugston Hutchinson and Henry Edward Turkington.

Somerset was a young man who was already an established industrialist, trading with Hutchinson as a linen manufacturer; he went on to be the Unionist MP for North Belfast from 1929 until 1945. Turkington appears to have been a minor partner in the enterprise and was probably only included because, as a travelling seller of wares, he was able to take an active part in sales and promotional work. The patent concerns a design for an ‘improved pillow case’, ‘adapted to be used either side up’. The patentees continue: We are aware that attempts have been made with a view to making such a pillow case, but they have all failed because the two sides, i.e. the top and bottom of the case, have not been alike and it could easily be detected when the bottom of the case was turned uppermost.

One wonders what pillowcases were like before 1903, as this patent demonstrates that prior to that year, when the libertinism of the Edwardian era was beginning to flourish, the suffragette movement was in the throes of birth, men were undertaking powered flight for the first time and Belfast’s very first motorcycle race was held, pillowcases were merely confused fragments of material, with only one correct method of use, one top and one bottom, and no versatility nor opportunity for user improvisation or interaction.

This valuable artefact, only recently unearthed from the Patent Archive, allows us a glimpse into the tortured history of pillowcase design. Prior to this there has been some contentiousness around the history of the housewife and oxford cases, and the evolution and interconnected developments of each. What is indisputable is the visual record of sleep manners generally during the 18th and 19th centuries, first in paintings and latterly in photographs. Painters of the European canon including David, Ingres and Boucher all clearly depict what at the time was referred to as ‘pillow-hatching’ or (somewhat more poetically) ‘pillow-scrumple’, the presence of a line or lines, impressed upon the face, as a result of sleeping on a pillowcase that was the wrong way up and thus displaying its seam. Courbet’s painting Le Sommeil (The Sleepers) of 1866, a representation of lesbian lovemaking as imagined for a wealthy male patron, initially prompted much disgust at the lubricity and amorality of Second Empire France, until the painter succumbed to pressure and painted out the marks of pillow-hatching on one of the subject’s faces. Julia Margaret Cameron’s photograph, ‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson, newly hatched, 1869’ is merely the best known photographic example of a subject who had apparently been too overcome by exhaustion at the point of sleep the previous evening to turn his pillowcase the right way up. When Cameron had photographed the famous actress Ellen Terry five years earlier, the right side of Terry’s face was so marked and scored by pillow-scrumple (apparently, and scandalously, from more than one pillow) that the photograph had to be taken as a profile for fear of offending public sensibilities and causing outrage in society. It is notable that Cameron made a coded reference to this in the image with the background she chose for

the portrait, a screen with a repeating print that seems to be a visual analogue for a traditionallypatterned mattress.

It is tempting to read the patent as further evidence of a general Edwardian trend toward relaxation of the moral strictures of the preceding century, as society gradually and painstakingly rebalanced itself, sometimes through reform and sometimes through political confrontation. But this may be too simplistic a reading of what is after all a complicated document. It may be more useful to read the patent as indexical of a puritanism attempting to renew and reinvigorate itself, whilst subtly moving the ground on which it intended to conduct its struggle. The various guardians of public morality – whose power it is all too easy to underestimate these days – decided that they could no longer countenance the corruption of manners that scrumpling – the visible marks of loose morals that were sometimes worn with defiance – could bring into being; if they were not able to actively change the moral composition of the nation, they could at least try and repress the visual signs of immorality or amorality. Thus Somerset, Hutchinson and Turkington should be read not as revolutionaries of the household but moralists intent on redefining the visuality of their society, the better to contain and constrain it. In this way, they were indeed modern – aware of the significant ideological power of ‘the image’ – but theirs was a rearguard action against changing times in which they perceived threats, but precious few opportunities.

It is probably not excessive to suggest that, at a time when Protestant Unionists felt that their whole world was under threat of being turned upside down, these three gentlemen felt that they could at least keep their pillowcases the right way up at all times; or at least, they could make it seem so. These pillows would not be used to smother depravity and lasciviousness, merely to make them less offensively visible.

By Daniel Jewesbury

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NO.18

THE PSYCHIC STRUCTURES AT THE GOLIGHER CIRCLE Book. Author: Crawford, W. J. (William Jackson), Publisher: New York, E. P. Dutton & company. 1921.

“I have been struck down mentally. I was perfectly all right up to a few weeks ago. It is not the psychic work. I enjoyed it too well. I am thankful to say that the work will stand. It is too thoroughly done for any material loopholes to be left.” WJ Crawford.

In the space between valued expression and ephemera, paranormal texts are often overlooked, but they remain a looking glass into an era. As the ages pass they seem even more alien, entering a flickering half-life as they are shuffled into the back seat by emerging belief systems. Sometimes the ephemeral becomes that way because the technical expressions become defunct, or are instructions for obsolete or redundant technology (in the Ballardian sense). Spiritualist books, like The Psychic Structures at the Goligher Circle, are a labyrinth series of obscure references and bullshit that have neither the poetry nor mania of Occult tomes of a similar age.

This is Paranormality expressed as a textbook, for the practical application of contact with the dead, of channeling spirits, of ectoplasm and ‘psychic rods’.

Published a year after Crawford’s death in 1920, The Psychic Structures at the Goligher Circle concerns itself chiefly with the engineering of psychic constructions out of vaguely defined ‘matter’ in different states. Ectoplasmic levers and pulleys are detailed - in intense depth.

The fate of the writer gives The Psychic Structures, an otherwise obtuse and dense work, a sense of humanity. WJ Crawford, a respected lecturer in Mechanical Engineering of Queen’s University, was entranced by the Golighy Sisters, Belfast Spiritualists of some repute and whispered talents. His obsession is draped with the properly respectable clothing of his age, but beneath it there may have laid a certain tension - the seance parlour, bathed in a red light glow, was a sexually charged chamber of grasped hands and heavy breaths. There is even a vague nod that the term Knocking Shop derives from those secret rooms - apocrypha perhaps, but it seems fitting.

Unlike Arthur Conan Doyle, who excitedly sang the praises of the Cottingley Sister’s dubious (even then, surely) but charming photographs of Fairies, WJ Crawford was wounded by his dealings with the Golighy Sisters. Whilst he emphatically states that those experiences were not the cause of his suicide in his final letter, quoted in the book’s preface, many contemporaries believed that his slow realisation that the sisters were frauds was too much for him.

The roots of Spiritualism probably reach deeper into the bowels of history and mankind’s consistently doomed but endless attempts to contact those who have ‘passed over’. Whilst shamans worldwide would arguably communicate with disembodied entities on alleged planes, it was the activities of another set of sisters that hurtled Spiritualism into the headlines. In New York, 1848, the Fox sisters caused the first ripples of sensation when they made the claim that the dead would communicate through them using the medium of table rapping.

Beginning in 1914, the activities of the Goligher Circle in Belfast, as observed and recorded

by Crawford, would provide a sideshow to the devastation being wreaked across Europe. Many still believe that the rise of Spiritualism itself was in some way due to the increasingly mechanised and pan-national conflicts that began in Europe during the mid nineteenth century. As repeating rifles and prototype machine guns began cutting down previously unimaginable amounts of people, the dehumanisation of war began, and the yearning

to communicate with fallen lovers, sons or relatives became overpowering. The First World War was surely a plentiful time for the Goligher sisters to operate, even though they claimed not to do so for monetary reasons - they insisted their activities were of a religious nature.

The Goligher Circle itself consisted of a lone father, a son, a son-in-law and the four sisters themselves, the most sensitive of all being the sixteen year old Kathleen Goligher, who became the focus of

The second substance was the ectoplasm itself, the physical cause of external manifestations.

Unlike the first substance, this was apparently drawn from the medium herself, and could never be replenished. Indeed, the constant harvesting of ectoplasm from the medium’s own nerve cells would be eventually destructive.

energy with that of a paramechanical apparatus the “whitish, cloud-like appearance of the matter” he describes with an engineer’s eye. And again, he speaks of the other matter, “Invisible, impalpable, and...outside The range of physical things altogether”. The book also contains a series of photographs that, in Crawford’s opinion, show the physical impressions that this invisible matter makes on clay.

Perhaps tellingly, he describes the marks as being of ‘gussets and stocking tops’ - ectoplasmic expressions of a repressed sexuality that was being exposed and teased by the Golighy Circle?

It’s tempting to glance through Psychic Structures and see it as indicative of Crawford’s descent. To the modern eye it appears a doomed rationalisation of the passionately irrational; the primal powers - whatever they actually were - of the Golighy sisters as observed by an awe-struck, mechanically-minded observer. We’ll maybe never know the secret of the Golighy Circle, nor of the truth of Crawford’s suicide and if it was in anticipation of being exposed as a sucker for young frauds. It was to be two years after Crawford’s death that the writer E. E. Fournier d’Albe would, after witnessing a seance held by the Golighy Circle, finally denounce them as frauds. Kathleen Golighy would eventually become Lady G. Donaldson and melt away into the past.

By Martin Dodds.

attention of both the alleged spirits and Crawford. Like the Fox sisters, the communication was initially through table wraps, but sometimes Kathleen would become entranced, and begin channeling. These red-lit attic seances would begin to feature even more extravagant displays of the sister’s powers. A trumpet appearing out of nowhere and floating around the room was allegedly witnessed. In one case, a table levitated in an agitated manner whilst Crawford leaped on it and attempted to steady it before being tipped off with some force - a scenario becoming even more comically strange when Crawford describes the “numerous sounds displaying an amused intelligence”.

Crawford himself believed he had made direct contact with a entity during a seance that claimed to have practiced medicine whilst alive. As both the entity and Crawford as both were presumably Men of Science, Crawford was able to glean that the spirit’s purpose was to look after Kathleen’s health.

The same spirit entity also presented Crawford with information, and that information provided him with a key foundation for Psychic Structure’s thesis. Basically, it was on the nature of the energies that created the phenomena witnessed in the seance, and their relationship with the medium. One substance was formed from a transient exchange of power between the participants in the seance, and the spirit world itself. This power, essence or energy was helpfully returned to the participants after the climax of the seance.

Throughout Psychic Structures, Crawford expresses a fetishisation of the mechanics of Spiritualism. His background in Mechanical Engineering is constantly apparent, perhaps in an attempt to make some kind of sense of the swirling phenomena he witnessed.

He defines these structures as physical objects - psychic rods used for rapping and communicating, and cantilevers for levitating tables. These are usually invisible, unsurprisingly, and Crawford recounts his time in the dim red light peeking under tables searching for these intangible structures. He claims that they became visible only when spectators to the seance were present, a result of their shared psychic matter being incompatible with that of the medium and members of the circle.

There are striking descriptions of the photographs that represent Crawford’s attempt at reconciling the primal channeling of ectoplasmic

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NO.23

NO.29

THE CONFESSIONS OF PROINSIAS O’TOOLE

INSIDE STORY: BELFAST MISERY TOUR

Book. Author: John Morrow. Blackstaff Press. 1977

Seamus Heaney said that John Morrow, the author of this savage comic novel set in the madness of 1970s Ulster, was “a fantasist, a joker bull in the literary china shop …. a master of cornerboy cant.” Tom Paulin wrote approvingly of Morrow’s “lacerating rhetoric which possesses an operatic and inebriated violence but doesn’t actually scathe anyone”. It is easy to see how this bawdy, energetic picaresque felt like a healthy release from the horror of that time, mercilessly sending up the absurdity of the Troubles with a clever inventiveness and bravado that the likes of Colin Bateman can only dream of.

The Confessions of Prionsias O’Toole was Morrow’s first novel, and at its centre is the titular Proinsias, aka Francie Fallis:“What started as a joke when everything went suddenly Green and Erse a couple of years back has proved a blessing in some ways: that last load of copper, for instance, whereas ‘Proinsias O’Toole’ got off with a six moon suspended and a twenty quid fine, Francie Fallis would have gone down for five years hard. Easy.” Proinsias, a self-described “notorious Taig baby-farmer”, universally recognised as a “fly fucker”, ducks and dives his way through Irish political life, bed and boozer. Recalling his origins, he describes how his “oul’ Republican Da brought home a framed picture of Churchill which bore the patriotic inscription ‘He Steered the Ship’. This he scored out, substituted ‘He Speared the Shit’, and hung it up between James Connolly and the Pope.”

The narrative of the novel is intense, surreal - sometimes overwhelmingly so – yet there is always the lingering sense of familiarity. Nothing ever changes much around these parts. A fake telegram sent by Proinsias - “Prods rampant.

Town on fire. Stay put.” - feels particularly contemporary.

Proinsias’s Protestant squeeze, Steffers – forever lying around in a state of sexually-available undress - is observed with particularly cruel and bawdy contempt: “handy-packed for quick access; odour-free; matt-finished in glorious non-skid light-tan; easily disposable.” Proinsias is happy to ply her with half-pints of draught stout, since “like all Prods, she bangs better when oiled.”

It’s not all harsh, relentless burlesque though.

Morrow’s diagnosis of “Shipyard Ear”, an industrial ailment caused by excessive noise, which makes every East-end bar on pay day “reverberate like an aviary of overgrown, belligerent mynah birds” is nicely done, while a visit to the dole office is evoked with telling wit and insight: “If the rest of our society mirrored the truly ecumenical spirit of the dole queue the likes of me would be forced to work for a living. Here citizens who had driven one another from factory and building site with bomb and bullet mix in good fellowship, all venom uniting against the pleasant young men and pretty girls behind the counter.

Also, it is the only building in the city where one can loiter for an hour in the certainty that one will not emerge as jig-saw for jovial morgue attendants. The most fanatically filthy bird never shits in its own nest.”

Of course, it all ends badly for the hapless Proinsias. He washes up in Mountjoy prison, from where he is writing these memoirs – in spite of the cellmate who used the early drafts “to wipe

his over-productive arse.” Steffers fares better: she returns to university, “wears black, chain smokes, never smiles, and has achieved fame as the first Irishwoman to say ‘fuck’ on the box. Hibernia called her ‘the Maud Gonne of student action’.”

Morrow, who worked for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, followed the publication of Proinsias with The Essex Factor (1982); Sects and Other Stories (1987); The Anals of Ballyturdeen (1996) and Pruck: A Life in Bits and Pieces (1999).

I have not encountered The Anals of Ballyturdeen, but it appears to continue - and perhaps even exceed - the scabrous picaresque of Proinsias, as an account from the time indicates: “In the council chamber of John Morrow’s Ballyturdeen (literal translation ‘townland of the little turds’), history is regurgitated weekly with all the muzzle velocity of an unhealthy bowel movement. There, where the standard bearers of Ireland’s two traditions have never in living memory managed to progress beyond the first item on any agenda without resorting to Grievous Bodily Harm, the debate moves from premise to violent conclusion with the inevitablility and hilarity of tragi-comedy.”

P.J. O’Rourke observed that “humour has nothing to do with the charming or the cheerful...

Humour is our response to the void of absurdity.”

With Morrow, absurdity is voided explosively and with a vicious satirical wit sadly absent from the political culture of today.

By Bitsy Sonomabiche

Magazine. No. 12 November 1973

My granddad was a printer, and was a trade union activist for The Typographical Association for most of his career. He still ran a printing press out of a shed in his garden after he retired, making religious tracts, orders of service and that sort of thing – his Thomson lithograph ended up in Coleraine Regional Museum. The printing ink gave the shed an inviting scent of kerosene and linseed oil, but any explorations as a youngster were curtailed by stories about the loss of digits in the gears of the press. The November 1973 issue of Inside Story still retains a nostalgic whiff of printing solvents, but there’s nothing nostalgic about the brutality endured by those trapped in the cogs of the justice system of 1970s Northern Ireland. Reports on internment, human rights abuse and prison violence make for sombre reading – and constitute an incredible archive of how awful things were at the time.

To help understand the context of the events described by Inside Story, it can be useful to compare their chronology with our current timeframe: if it had been published in November this year, Operation Demetrius would have begun August 2010 and would carry on until December 2014. Over this period, the operation would ultimately lead to the mass arrest and internment without trial of 1,981 people. If you consider yourself a Marxist – and the bourgeois tradition of youthful ultra-radicalism means a lot of folk do – you would probably have been lifted, as Cold War paranoia led to MI5 classifying you as an adversary of the state. Now imagine The Vacuum suffering from social injustice-induced rage, and commissioning some pretty daring investigative journalism – there you have it: Inside Story in a nutshell.

The cover story (“The Belfast Misery Tour”) refers to the weekly bus trip that the families of female internees made, from Belfast to Armagh Prison. The author, Alan Sinclair, posed as a relation of one of the internees in order to record his account of the journey and the conditions within the prison. Whatever your thoughts on the events of this time, any accusation of Sinclair indulging in a bit of his own misery tourism can be dismissed out of hand. This is not some prurient intrusion into the pain of others – the lengths Sinclair went to gain the trust of the families and, importantly, the consent of the prisoners demonstrates a commitment to responsible journalism.

However, as was the fashion then, a hefty dollop of Marxist analysis was tacked on to most articles, typically expressed in a manner not particularly accessible to non-academics. Fortunately Sinclair’s article escaped this treatment and seems the better for it – but there’s also something to be said for the earnestness of the social critiques. It makes a refreshing change from the ironic detachment of a lot of what is written today (hold on ‘til I take this plank out of my eye…)

Uncannily, the zine does appear wearily prescient of today’s dreary problems – the conditions of prisoners and prison officers, the abortion debate, the trustworthiness of mainstream media, and – pre-empting defamation by tweet by a good forty years – several hefty libel cases. There does seem to be a worrying tendency for the magazine to make serious allegations about named individuals – this may have been common in its day, but jars unpleasantly when read today. While it was interesting to spot Peter Hain’s (yes, THAT Peter Hain) letter of support to the editorial team,

it’s also reassuring to know The Vacuum would never publish anything that could land them in court…

The publishing process of Inside Story is a bit of a mystery – the cover page is of thicker paper with photographs on both the front and inside cover – the bleaching on dark areas of the photos suggest it may have been produced on an early 1970s photocopier. The photos were literally cut and pasted into position – the scalpel marks are still visible around the edges of one image. When the 15p cover price is adjusted for inflation (using the Bank of England inflation calculator), the editors were looking £1.42 per issue, however without circulation figures we have no idea of the amount of their cash flows. Judging by the number of appeals for subscriptions, it wasn’t enough.

The difficulty in putting together the rest of the mag seems incomprehensible – 16,000 words being typed (in what resembles L.C. Smith 5, font fans) at an average speed of 33 words per minute equates to eight solid hours of typing. Bearing in mind that errors could not be corrected with the press of a delete key, that’s a lot of concentration required to get your draft right. It seems especially arduous when, for the purposes of this review, the mag was scanned and run through optical character recognition software to produce a Word document – a process that took about two minutes. No doubt the editors would be amused that spelling mistakes dating from 1973 were corrected in 2012 with a press of F7.

The crispness of the font rules out smudgy mimeograph reproduction, so the remaining 22 pages were either photocopied or lithographed – the sharp edges of the text characters and the smell of the paper suggesting the latter. I like to think it was reamed off in some aromatic printer’s den, much like my grandfather’s. No doubt he would have scratched his head at some of the more esoteric language used by the Left, but you can’t be a trade unionist without being a little bit socialist. I think he would have approved.

By Stuart Fallis.

object

NO.33

the vacuum

ANDWELLA’S DREAM LOVE AND POETRY

Long Player. Label CBS. Released 1969.

Andwella’s Dream were a band formed in Belfast in the mid to late 60s; formerly The Method, they moved to London and released several LPs and singles for CBS with the lineup of David Lewis (guitar), Nigel Smith (bass) and Gordon Barton (drums). Their first LP is what I am concerned with here. I confess to not having heard of them previously and as per my brief will concentrate on the details of and my impressions of individual tracks, artwork etc, noting anything distinctly Northern Irish.

track 5 Clockwork Man Begins with a worrying burst of saxophone that almost tricked me into thinking we’d jumped forward to the 80s. Irritating vocals are, sadly, back. Lyrics mention a red and white clown, possibly the Clockwork Man of the title.

track 11 Take My Road Bit of an unfortunate stylistic turn, a string section makes an appearance, the vocals straining for a soulful quality that really isn’t this singer’s strength. Not much else to say about this one. It’s short. track 12 Felix Very Procol Harum. Whole track is put through a phase effect at points. Felix appears to be a joker’s son who could cheer up anyone. Could do with him calling round right now. Struggling slightly.

Front and Back cover - the artwork is typical of its time, in a style easily recognisable to anyone familiar with psychedelic artwork of the period, particularly The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.

track 13 Goodbye The last track. Singer is leaving and asks someone (parent/lover/child?) to not be sad. Spare acoustic backing. Appears to contain the couplet “If you need a friend/my old mum’s the end”. Eh? Again, pleasant enough if not a life-changing epiphany.

Not a particularly promising start as I loathe The Beatles. track 1 The Days Grew Longer For Love Acoustic folk intro, folk-rockish full band. I could do without the Mersey/Procol Harum/freakbeat style vocals. Nice pre-empting of Thin Lizzy-ish twin lead guitars. Vague lyrics, pondering the meaning of thoughts, love, etc. Really not feeling the vocals, but wisely not too much of them so far. Ok but not spectacular. track 2 Sunday A bit of a Northen Irish accent discernable on this one; fairly standard rocker, psych influences darkening to something heavier. No Sabbath though. Vague lyrics concerning searching, travelling, heading East, etc. Quite nice one-note solo at end. track 3 Lost A Number Found A King Expectations of the mystical founded on the title (long, vague of meaning) and track length (long) largely borne out by extended 3-minute intro composed of rattling chimes and vaguely Oriental sounding flute and gongs. Quite pleasant organled psych-lite. Nice delay on guitar. Vocals less annoying. Vaguely mystical lyrics about “a land of gold”. Not Belfast then. Does mention being lost then found in a graveyard though which gains bonus points from me. Ok but no need for the 6 minutes duration, this may be the big prog number but you are not King Crimson. track 4 Man Without A Name Another slight stylistic change, chord sequence vaguely reminiscent of Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan, jaunty tune offset by nihilistic lyrics referencing having no home, killing time, suicidal ideations in the face of another day like this one. Appears to be written from the point of view of someone homeless, either spiritually or physically, but really who among us hasn’t felt like that in our wee flegloving parochial province. Vocals have thankfully become less annoying, the less they remind me of The Beatles the better. I really do hate The Beatles.

And the 60s. In fact I may not be the ideal person to write about this record. I mean, they’ve obviously put a lot of effort into this, laboured over it, touring and promotion aren’t easy, and now some sad case is damning with faint praise their work over 40 years later.

Generically soulful arrangement.

Halfway through and someone appears to be playing a duck whistle and the band start whooping as crowd noise and applause fades in. Then the singer begins to feel sad as the dancing man in front of him starts to die. A parable on the alienating effect of passively witnessing a spectacle devoid of meaning, eerily relevant to our X Factored present? A lament to always being the dancing clown on stage and the essential loneliness of that position? I have no idea.

Still, at least this gets it done in under 3 minutes.

The Wall by Pink Floyd lasts for almost an hour and a half. track 6 Cocaine Drugs are bad (except for the ones we like). Vaguely soulful again. “Funky” Hammond organ. Makes me think of late Paul Weller or Ocean Colour Scene. None of these are things designed to endear a record to me. Rhymes “cocaine” with “brain” several years before Dillinger I suppose. Some use of dissonance during the break, and fades out into reverb and oddly upsetting scat singing in a vaguely experimental fashion, but come on lads you’re losing me here. track 7 Shades Of Grey Fairly standard descending chord sequence but at least the twin lead guitars are back. Generic standing-tall-in-the-face-of-adversity lyric. Nice ride-into-the-sun solos. Running out of things to say now.

track 8 High On A Mountain Effective main riff but the Kinks obviously thought so too when they came up with it for “Sunny Afternoon” a few years previously. Lyrics reference how nice it is to be high on a mountain with the breeze in your hair, although talk of seeing ‘coloured patterns” and a “new land” may lead one to suspect that the “high” on this mountain may not be entirely related to pastoral romps. Pleasant enough psychpop. Beginning to feel the urge to put on some Mescalinum United. track 9 Andwella Psych folk-rock lament for the titular Andwella.

Lyrically Andwella seems to have been a witchy type who put the fear in the local community, men turn pale at the mention of her name etc. Nudity is mentioned in a Wicker Man fashion. Jaw’s harp makes an appearance. Women are evil and to be feared, particularly if they are attractive and accompanied by a black cat. track 10 Midday Sun Begins promisingly with some backwards tape edits, then settles into a fairly standard if pleasant folk-rocker. I seem to be using the words “vague”, “generic” and “standard” a lot, which may reflect equally on my rapidly diminishing critical faculties as much as the quality of the music.

Overall the album is competently played.

Stylistically the amount of variation almost hurts the group; they are obviously accomplished musicians but approach each stylistic turn in fairly generic fashion. Indeed if I didn’t know they were from Northern Ireland I almost certainly wouldn’t have guessed; there is little here that is geographically distinct, the music very much of a piece with equally obscure (and, to give the band their due, well known) psych groups of the period.

Maybe looking for something distinctly Northern Irish in this is a mistake? The group were obviously attempting to break into that market, and as mentioned above signed with CBS after a move to London. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this release, similarly to a lot of records from this particular time and genre, is the aftermarket value of the LP itself. Despite releases on CBS, it would appear that Andwella’s Dream did not become a household name; presumably the record did not sell vast quantities, and the remainder of the run may well have been junked. The obscurity and physical scarcity of the record itself have, as with many LPs of the period, led to it becoming a collector’s item fetching up to £500 at auction. Alas my editors at The Vacuum did not supply me with a mint/still sealed copy for the purposes of this review...

By Stuart Watson

object

the vacuum

NO.45

THE END OF THE WORLD MAN Film. Director: Bill Miskelly. 1986. Aisling Films.

In a year that was marked, like so many others, by ongoing Unionist protests (this time against the Anglo-Irish Agreement), an apparently simple children’s film gave a chilling portent of times to come, as well as a vision of innocence lost. Director Bill Miskelly had worked at the BBC as both a producer and director, working with luminaries including David Hammond and Robin Wylie. In 1983 he was sacked by the BBC for making a film while he was on holiday (the sort of over-productivity that was apparently frowned on back then) and formed his own production company with writer Marie Jackson.

The End of the World Man was their second feature.

Large parts of the opening of the film are a kind of plotless amble through a childish middle-class arcadia of newts, streams, meadows and allotments.

Children roam free with large musical instruments and form friendships across boundaries of faith. Men garden. Random soldiers occasionally intervene, doing random soldierly things like walking back-to-back and pointing rifles, giving the idyll some of the strangeness of an Ian Hamilton Finlay print. But even this evidence of casual militarism is somehow rendered benign, unable to intervene too grossly on the green and pleasant land that is Belfast in the 1980s.

That is, until bent property developers and religious nutters combine to do evil, and the pastorale is threatened with despoliation, vandalism by concrete and tarmac: in short, a new leisure centre and car park. Two young girls, thoroughly unconcerned by their religious differences, decide to take on God

and Mammon, to oppose the destruction of the glen that supports their inner life so crucially, and which they love so passionately. With crude placards they hold off the bulldozers, until a friend happens to notice that a bronze age souterrain runs through the site and the development is halted forever.

The film is interesting not primarily for the record it gives us of its own times, although it is useful to have a corrective such as this to remind us how lovely the city was during this period, with everyone living in nice big houses with big gardens, and speaking so politely to one another and not really worrying about religion or politics at all (the armoured cars and soldiers must have been on their way to somewhere else, maybe Derry); rather it is fascinating because it gives us a prescient warning of an age still to come – our own, the age where rapacious property development is a ubiquitous part of the landscape of our city, often aided by a ‘moral’ mission (property development is good because it brings us prosperity and good things and peace, and so if you are against property development you must be against peace, and good things, and prosperity).

This is a tale of potential expulsion from the garden, of a contemporary Fall, except that this time, somehow, Man wins (well, young girls, actually). God (in the form of the bible-bashing civil servant responsible for the development plan) is exposed as a criminal, a gangster involved in private profiteering. We do not always need or want the ‘good things’ that our leaders decide, on our behalf, that we must have; the leisure centre is banished,

innocence is preserved, Man (girls) is (are) pure and deserving of his (their) idyll.

The tale brings together stars including Michael Knowles (the somewhat dim Captain Ashwood in BBC’s touching exploration of Second World War race relations, It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum), actor and drinks connoisseur James Nesbitt, fun loving newsreader Pamela Ballantine, and barefoot genius Niall Cusack. Together, this cast ask disturbing, difficult questions: what, in this city of innocence and cupidity, is really ours, after all? What do we truly own in our city? What really is public? What on earth is ‘private land’ in a city where we are all equals, with the same needs and desires, the same wants that must be nourished? Who has the right to ‘own’ mountain, glen or sea?

Today our city is fragmented and riven, not merely by the familiar sectarian songlines, but more profoundly by patterns of private ownership and exclusion. A modern enclosure movement is progressing unchecked, parcelling up land we have come to think of, probably misguidedly, as ‘public’ so that we can be told that we can’t do that or sit there by men with quasi-military blue jumpers and puffa jackets. All over the city, laneways and squares, streets and riverside plazas have been sold off to the lowest bidder, because public agencies just can’t be bothered to manage public space any more, to build a public city, and because the private developers have managed to win the ideological war, to the extent that civil servants and politicians can no longer even imagine how to develop a city

Jazz Trad World Roots Experimental Contemporary

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By Dan Jewesbury.

BELFAST’S BEST

CULTURAL CINEMA

CHRISTMAS @ QFT It’s A Wonderful Life

As a music promoter, we’re proud to be outgoing and adventurous. Safe is fine. But sometimes safe is boring, and nobody likes boring. It is our mission is to provide you with a range of music that is not readily available elsewhere.

Exciting, alternative, amazing, life-changing music.

without lining the pockets of these unaccountable racketeers and crooks, to whom we’ve handed over all responsibility for our communal existence. We desperately need some young girls to lie down in front of the bulldozers, to teach us the lessons we are too tired and defeated to teach ourselves, and restore us to the garden, the city, the paradise we must regain, before it’s too late. Release the newts!

White Christmas Babette’s Feast Gremlins The Muppet Christmas Carol

JANUARY 2013 Quartet The Impossible Chinatown Midnight’s Children The Sessions McCullin

MovingOnMusic.co.uk Queen’s Film Theatre 20 University Square, Belfast, BT7 1PA Box Office: 028 9097 1097 (Mon to Sun, after 6pm only)

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object

the vacuum

NO.47

ZOMBIE GENOCIDE

Film. Directed by Darryl Sloan. 1993. Midnight Films.

As aficionados of the undead will argue, zombie cinema cannot simply be dismissed as a gratuitous display of brain-eating and gore make-up. It can also point towards deeper truths; with the veneer of civilised society stripped away by the need to avoid wandering hordes of catatonic lunatics, life again becomes a primal quest for survival in a desolate, dangerous world where the ties that supposedly bind us are strained to breaking point.

Having spent my formative years in the Borough of Craigavon, I can directly relate to this scenario and therefore feel that Portadown was an apt choice of location for what is billed as ‘Ireland’s first zombie movie’.

Before choosing to spend 65 minutes of your life streaming a 20 year-old, no-budget, locallymade film called Zombie Genocide on Youtube, you must be willing to leave all your pretentious ideals about subtle, flamboyant cinematography and mise-en-scene on the shelf with your Drive and Tree of Life blu-rays. This is as raw and visceral as downing a particularly sour-tasting bottle of Buckfast in a bus shelter on a cold, wet night. And, as with this regional analogy, the resulting experience, although somewhat shabby, inevitably brings some elements of enjoyment and humour. Although it has the unmistakable air of a high-school film project, it is ambitious in length and style given the obvious technical constraints. Editing was all done in-camera without the aid of modern software, but it is still obvious that a good deal of thought has gone into framing and panning techniques. Even

though the background hiss is terrible throughout, it is redeemed by the creepy, analogue-sounding music score of atmospheric layers composed on a primitive Amiga computer.

The film opens with a group of four friends awakening on the edge of a wood and packing up after a week-long camping trip. For some inexplicable reason they have opted to bring only one hilariously small and flimsy tent, leaving two poor souls lying on the ground in their sleeping bags.

This inability to attend to even the most rudimentary shelter requirements does not bode well for their capacity to cope with the much more serious matter of battling the living dead. Upon their return to the deserted town, a zombie in a Parka jacket eats Peter’s arm for breakfast while Doc (played by the film’s director Darryl Sloan) finds a cassette explaining the epidemic and subsequent evacuation. From here on in it’s fairly standard, kitsch blood-letting fare – the reanimated residents of Portadown are clumsily dispatched with drills, knives, screwdrivers, hammers, guns and anything else that comes to hand as our protagonists desperately attempt to escape their besieged house and make their way to a safe haven.

Throughout the film Sloan wears his George Romero influences on his sleeve. The four main characters’ names are all taken from his series of Dead films, the address of the evacuation station is 68 Romero Avenue (‘68 being the year of the release of the first instalment, Night Of the Living Dead), and there is a large Day of The Dead poster

on the bedroom wall of Stephen’s house where a lot of the action takes place. However, despite being the bearers of these conspicuous cultural references, the characters display a very poor grasp of the well documented zombie avoidance strategies therein. One by one they are attacked and picked off in classic style through inexcusable negligence; nobody ever checks behind them, doors are left ajar rather than boarded up, a gun and keys are misplaced, lights are left on and, rather than sleeping in shifts, two characters miss an important TV update on the situation. And, in perhaps one of the most overlooked parts of the script, despite being filmed so close to Craigavon, nobody apparently knows how to steal a car.

So, as with Romero’s films, which touch upon issues such as consumerism, racism and sexism, are we supposed to read any subtext within the plot here? Are the scenes filmed around Portadown College a veiled critique of the Mid-Ulster education system? Could the shot of Stephen riding his bike at night through a cluster of stumbling, brain dead cretins be a nod to the difficulties of navigating one’s way home safely in a provincial town after pub closing time? Is the complete absence of women a comment on the ineptitude of a patriarchal society? Is the final part of the journey past a church, red-white-and-blue kerbstones and UVF graffiti a subtle satire on the mindnumbing effects of Northern Ireland’s religious and political polarisation on the general populace? I somehow doubt it; therefore is best to view the film in the spirit

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in which it was created – a guerrilla experiment amongst a group of friends whose enthusiasm for their chosen niche shines through despite unavoidable limitations. If nothing else, you have to admire the audacity of a crew who ran around Portadown firing off replica handguns at dawn during the height of the Troubles in the name of art. * Midnight Pictures went on to produce and release several other titles which are available to order or view online at darrylsloan.wordpress.com/ entertainment/film/

By Jason Mills

the vacuum

object

NO.56

FRUUPP

FUTURE LEGENDS

Progressive Rock? From Northern Ireland? It seems unlikely – and you’d be forgiven for not knowing about it – but it happened. The reason you (probably) haven’t heard of Fruupp, Northern Ireland’s first (and only?) progressive rock group, is down to geographical misfortune, bad timing and missed opportunities.

Here are five easy steps to ensure that your progressive rock group is doomed to fail: form in Northern Ireland at a time when showbands ruled the dancehalls; give your band a name that is almost impossible to pronounce and difficult to spell; ask a man credited as Denis “it’llallworkoutinthemix” Taylor to produce your first album (it didn’t); release that album in late 1973, just as the prog spell is beginning to fade; and have a key member ‘find religion’ and leave the band just as the man who signed Talking Heads and Madonna comes knocking.

Fruupp (rhymes with ‘up’ – see?) released Future Legends, their debut LP, on 5th October 1973. The first of four albums recorded over the group’s lifetime, it displayed an impressive musical ambition and showcased a band capable of creating beautiful passages of music, albeit fleetingly. But how did this happen, this progressive rock – no wait, symphonic rock – via Maghera, Dungannon and Belfast?

Originally formed in 1970, the line-up that recorded Future Legends was settled on in early 1971. Vincent McCusker (guitar and vocals), Stephen Houston (keyboards, oboe and vocals), Peter Farrelly (bass and lead vocals), and Martin Foye (drums) had musical backgrounds ranging from showbands and the Ulster Youth Orchestra to a touring circus band. How could they fail?

Fruupp would have been an anomaly in the early ‘70s Irish music scene if they had stuck around long enough to be part of it. The band made their stage debut, following months living and rehearsing in a dilapidated house in Belfast, on 23rd June 1971. They supported Rory Gallagher at the Ulster Hall. Not a bad start. But the band had a ferry to catch. Suspecting that this new ‘Progressive’ music would not go down well in the ballrooms, the band set sail for England and, they hoped, a more sympathetic ear. At the time, showbands and the ballrooms ruled the Irish music scene so relocating to prog’s spiritual home was probably a good idea.

Dickie Rock this was not. We’ll never know but it’s likely that Fruupp would have been a prog fish floundering in a non-existent prog pond if they had stayed.

After meeting up with soon-to-be unofficial fifth member Paul Charles in London – Charles would perform the roles of manager, agent, sound engineer, roadie and lyricist simultaneously – Fruupp set off on an intensive period of touring between the summers of 1971 and 1973. Along the way the band played support to ‘70s heavyweights Queen, ELO, Hawkwind, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Focus and the band they were most often compared to, Genesis. But they needed an LP. Progressive rock was as much about the grand statements and elaborate storytelling of ‘the album’ (preferably a concept album) as it was about playing to men in long coats at Friars in Aylesbury and The Red Lion in Leytonstone.

A demo tape containing four songs found its way to the A&R Director of Dawn Records, the progressive arm of Pye Records. Subsequently signed – Pye was home to the Kinks so that was good enough for them – Fruupp entered Escape Studios in Kent in the summer of 1973 to record

Long Player. Label: Dawn Records. 1973.

band, particularly their third album, The Prince of Heaven’s Eyes. Houston played his last show with Fruupp less than two weeks before Stein was due to see them play. Sadly the under-rehearsed threepiece that greeted Stein didn’t quite cut it and they failed the live audition. We’ll never know if Fruupp in their prime would have impressed Stein enough for him to get out his chequebook. This was a man known later for his punk and new wave signings after all. And of course punk, taking hold in the mid to late ‘70s, reduced some of the giants of prog to hairy rubble. How could poor old Fruupp expect to survive? The band carried on for one post-Stephen Houston album and tour, finally calling it quits in 1976. Northern Ireland’s chapter in the Book of Prog was written.

It didn’t quite end there. Fruupp’s ‘cult’ or ‘obscure’ credentials were affirmed when beat maker and hip-hop producer Madlib sampled ‘Sheba’s Song’ from their final album, Modern Masquerades, for a Talib Kweli song featuring Norah Jones. Thankfully, Talib shared credit and, more importantly, publishing with the songwriters.

Success at last. Sort of. their debut LP. Housed in a garish, nonemore-prog sleeve designed by bassist and singer Peter Farrelly, Future Legends (they really were setting themselves up for a fall with that title) contained eight songs written by Vince McCusker with arrangements by McCusker and ex-Ulster Youth Orchestra member Stephen Houston. The band opted for live string accompaniment rather than the ubiquitous Mellotron beloved of most other prog bands. Perhaps the string players were cheaper.

Many of the songs on Future Legends contained overt references to classical music. Fruupp didn’t incorporate Irish music into rock to the same extent as, say, Horslips – this was very much in the English tradition of progressive rock.

But what do these 39 minutes sound like? The first of two versions of the title track opens the album, a romantic instrumental theme for strings lasting a minute and a half. It’s a bold introduction for a band’s debut LP. A second, a cappella version closes the album. The first ‘song’ is ‘Decision’, a stage favourite and the song that stood out on the demo tape that led to the band being signed.

Heavy guitar and soloing combine with a string arrangement that nods in the direction of Yes’ Time and a Word album. McCusker’s guitar parts owed more to the blues than the more experimental, idiosyncratic styles of Steve Hackett (Genesis guitarist) or Robert Fripp. It’s on ‘Decision’ that the claim that “it’ll all work out in the mix” from the record’s producer is revealed to be a falsehood.

The muddy mix almost ruins one of Fruupp’s best songs. It could be argued that lead singer Peter Farrelly was the weak link in the Fruupp chain. His voice lacked the character of a Peter Gabriel or a Jon Anderson but his bass parts were a prominent and distinctive feature of the band’s sound so we’ll forgive him.

Many of the songs on Future Legends obey the loud/quiet/loud tradition of most prog – the Pixies didn’t invent that – and of course tricky time signatures feature throughout. The most ‘prog’ thing here is probably ‘Graveyard Epistle’, which moves through several complex sections and is reminiscent of King Crimson’s ‘Epitaph’ in its quieter passages.

‘Lord of the Incubus’ (definitely a prog title) opens

side two and attempts to combine Ennio Morricone Western film score influences, boogie-woogie piano and rock ‘n’ roll guitar with not entirely successful results. The following ‘Olde Tyme Future’ almost settles into a Krautrock-like motorik beat but doesn’t quite manage it. Fruupp followed the prog blueprint of cramming as many ideas as possible into a single song. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. Perhaps the most successful song on the album is the (almost) closing track, ‘Song for a Thought’. Reminiscent of Genesis’ 1971 album Nursery Cryme, the song opens with a Horslipsesque electric guitar reel, includes an oboe-led section that could have been lifted from Roxy Music’s first album and concludes with a crescendo of strings. Phew.

Future Legends sounds familiar and almost comforting. The band wore its influences on its sleeve – Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant, The Beatles, Beethoven! – and the string arrangements serve as a stylistic glue, making this a cohesive, if not entirely successful, ‘proper album’. Next stop Wembley Arena! Well, no.

Touring and more touring followed – including a performance at the Whitla Hall in Belfast with the Ulster Youth Orchestra – and three more albums released within 18 months of the first. But success didn’t come despite increased proficiency and modestly increasing sales. Bands like Genesis and Yes, who released their debut albums in 1969, were given time by their records companies to hone their sound and grow audiences. Overnight success and hit singles were nice but unusually music, not business, was the driving force for progressive labels. Quite simply, Fruupp arrived too late to the prog tea party. Progressive rock had lost its lustre by the mid ‘70s. Robert Fripp was one of the first to realise this and got out when the going was good, wisely disbanding King Crimson in 1974.

The departure of pivotal member Stephen Houston in 1974 marked the beginning of the end for Fruupp. Houston ‘found religion’ (so the story goes) and left just as the band was garnering interest from Seymour Stein, co-founder of Sire Records and the man who signed Madonna, Talking Heads, The Ramones and The B-52s. Stein was a fan of the

By Michael Staley

the vacuum

object

NO.57

CROOKED SHAMROCK Book. Author. Author: CB Gilford, Arlington Books, London, 1970.

Never judge a book by its cover, dear reader. Unless it happens to be a title from the august house of Arlington Books.

The Irish Times exclaimed that Beatrice Coogan’s Big Wind possessed “an intimate savagery” it was “impossible not to respond to”. And who can forget Derek Lambert’s pulsating Kites of War, a tome so glutted in the characteristic Arlington density of prose that the Evening Standard was provoked into spluttering “The action is exciting”. The Standard cannily observed, that Lambert’s description of Tibet was “excellent”. Even the usually introverted Daily Mail were compelled to comment on the “marvellous Himalayan setting”. History (or for that matter the dust jacket) doesn’t record what the great literary critics of the time had to say about CB Gilford’s The Crooked Shamrock. But replace the word “Himalayan” for “Irish” and “Tibet” for “Ireland” and you’ll still have absolutely no clue as to the density of action, plot and character, essayed with such startling abandon in this Celtic epic.

The only clue might be the front cover’s assurance of “an hilarious novel about an Irish plot to kidnap the Prince of Wales”, or the inlay’s reinterpretation “a rollicking romp of a novel about a gang of Irishmen who accidentally commit the crime of the century!” The exclamation mark is well appointed, for chapter after chapter could render the reader into a state of permanent shock.

Perhaps the biggest hint of what’s to come is in the revelation that Dr. Gilford not only lectured in theatre at university of Missouri in Kansas City, but also enjoyed a “sheltered youth in....very nearly an Irish Catholic ghetto”. It’s almost certainly thanks to this sheltering - both geographical and actual from the immediate banalities of the actual Irish experience that transform The Crooked Shamrock from a culturally naive rollick to a disconcertingly observed rip-roar . For what better vantage point to observe the cultural minutiae of a society than what anthropologists and authors alike have called “the healthy distance”?

From his elevated position, atop the gleaming dreaming spires of University of Missouri, Gilford has dared to confect, nay infect, a mere penny dreadful adventure with vim, verve and a surprisingly confident grasp on the mental and physical anatomy of a romantic-wind blown Erin long thought sacrificed to cheap, sterile modernity.

A bog-standard thriller if you will, that digs deep and finds nuggets that sneering literary cynics used to call stereotypes. Here they are reclaimed, revived and ready to fight for “Ireland, St Patrick, the angels and all the fairies”. The chief protagonist here, is one Matt O’Quinn - a red haired IRA man hewn from the rugged stuff of Ballydoon village (nb. the name was changed here to protect the real Balladoon village - from becoming a literary tourist Mecca).

As is a common peculiarity to the fictional Irish psyche, Matt believes he’s “The only living Irishmen still yearning for vengeance and freedom”, as do the rest of the Ballydoon IRA Brigade, who in reality have “never even blown up a privy” .

Da’s Army earns its patriot stripes however when a drunken jaunt over the bog one night finds the ancient heroes of Ireland coming out of the fog to berate our tipsy, flame-haired hero. The noless rouged apparition of Red Hugh O’Donnell demands, somewhat cryptically, that O’Quinn venture to England and “take a name for a name”.

This zinger of a ghostly riddle exercises the brigade and even causes the normally savvy O’Quinn to sit on a recently vacated stool, so deep in thought is

he. Not even the pin-sharp head of Dan Skiddy or the misty ruminations of Foggy Flannery (both still common names in the Irish heartland) can decipher what it means. The notion that Red Hugh wants Matt O’Quinn to change his name for the cause is dispelled within hours of debate. Indeed it takes the brigade eight whole pages of dialogue to come to the almost obvious conclusion that they’ve been tasked with kidnapping the boy Prince of Wales, Richard, and taking him to Ireland, thereby bringing about the collapse of the British state. But surely the UK’s monarchy is merely constitutional and real power derives from parliament I hear you all nearly crying out loud? Well you’re not alone. Another four pages of rumination finds the Ballydoon Brigade realise that the capture of the heir apparent would destroy the English by “Destroying their morale” Or as O’Quinn puts it “Pride - the only thing that keeps that island afloat. Sure it isn’t goodness or honesty or brains or love of fellow man.” A sly literary blow couched in playfully innocent dialogue that gets to the heart of the English condition.

What ensues is a giddy account of Irishmen abroad, then home, then back abroad again - all in the name of knocking perfidious Albion off its lofty stallion. O’Quinn disguises himself as Australian rogue Herbert Benson with little more than a middling knack for bad accents and black hair dye. And Little flourishes abound in the author’s uncanny pastiche of historical verity. For example Lady Cynthia’s Wooer is a “real corker” of a novel in the racier book shelves of London.

The royal kidnap is accomplished thanks to an ingenious plot involving a brutish nanny named Gwendoline Sears and school teacher Phil Brady acquiring “Enough dynamite to blow up any castle in England”. And perhaps even more chillingly “a book of instructions on how to use it” just in case the “guardian angel at his side” nipped off for a quick

woodbine.

Young Prince Dick is nabbed in a nearby forest, a nanny is chinned and a fog comes out of the west to confound the Brits, which leads to perhaps the most spine-tingling passage in the book since O’Quinn alighted in that fresh stool.

Old lir god of the sea commanded a line of dark clouds - spanning the horizon like sable hued cavalry, stern, unmoving, perfectly disciplined, sitting their horses, waiting for the wind to sound the charge.

There’s nothing to be said. Just marvel at the singular lack of editing required to make those words ring out from the page, even today, across the decades, the phrase rings like an anxious GUM patient, the third day after testing.

As in real life, not even the full might of the forces at Britannia’s disposal can hope to best the plucky spunk of a handful of Irishmen with even half an idea in their head and most of the words to ‘Fields of Athenrae’ in their hearts.

Even wily Inspector Willow of “the Yard” has his best baked plans upended by Irish guile.

Undeterred, Willow grapples with the Irish character time and again as thrillingly described in this passage: It’s the key to all of this. The Irish Dispositions, idiosyncrasies. Then two traits occurred to him - alcoholism and garrulousness - they dovetailed neatly. ‘It’s quite possible the kidnapping is being boasted of in some pub as we speak’, reasoned Willow.

Willow’s attempts to inveigle himself with these “Serious priests of Bacchus” comes undone all too quickly however, as the leads dry up when he betrays his Englishness to the natives by saying he’s

simply “gadding about a bit”.

Even 159 Scotland Yard men in Dublin masquerading as tourists can get a bead on young Dickie. That’s because he’s back in Ballybeen, and it is where he stays even as the British Ambassador is cutting a deal with the dodgy Taoiseach (is there any other kind?) which ends in the Irish PM giving his blessing to the hanging of these IRA scoundrels and the ambassador rejoining: “that’s jolly decent of you”. And wasn’t it ever thus, political historians?

The Irish Government’s complicity and thrall to British subjection of their own land is tellingly revealed in the following stupefying but essentially expository exchange: “The IRA isn’t us - they didn’t sign the peace treaty, but we did”. Food for thought indeed.

The tale then takes on Dumas proportions of carefully capped melodrama as good Prince Dick is accidentally baptised with a bucket of Holy Water by the irascible Ballydoon Canon, a fictional facsimile of Milo O’Shea if ever there wasn’t one.

As a beleagured Willow faces professional ridicule and “a desk with a loaded pistol” things seem to have reached a narrative impasse. But Dr Gilford’s theatrical training has taught him nothing if not how to take the unlikely into the realms of the unaccountable Years later, as rakish young Kevin O’Quinn (spoiler! its really Dickie!) comes of age amongst the cobbles of sleepy Ballydoon, he too meets red Hugh on the evocative and coincidentally postcardy bogland. Shakespeare wouldn’t have known what’s to do with such a remarkable plot device, so wisely left it to others with US theatre doctorates.

Several more fog assisted kidnaps later the English Crown is restored, but not at the expense of Irish Pride. It’s not giving too much away to say that King Kevin the First of England ascends to the throne, thereby righting the wrongs of ten centuries of Irish penury, and not even evil republican (with a small English ‘r’) Prime Minister Harrington can depose this new royal line, and it’s just as well.

Shudder if you will as the Inspector imagines with some horror “what would London be without the changing of the guard. A Drab proletarian factory city.” It really doesn’t bear considering.

There is then a prescient flash towards the indefatigable iconoclasm of further Irish republican leaders in their refusal to take the Queen’s shilling in benefits or welfare remuneration. King Kevin, in a stirring scene, tells the shocked English that: “I’d be better off working the roads, I don’t want your English money, thankee. I learned that to be Irish was the nobility of the earth and to be king of England doesn’t seem to be much, for the English are devils and the lowest breed of humanity.”

And with that he’s crowned.

And so the Crooked Shamrock resolves the ancient enmity of two peoples with a cheeky smile and a puckish “Erin go Blah”. In the idiom of our hero Matt O’Quinn: sure isn’t it a rare kind of Irishmen they be fashioning in University of Missouri.

By Joe Nawaz

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NO.59

DANCING ON NARROW GROUND: YOUTH AND DANCE IN ULSTER

Documentary. Dir. Desmond Bell. 1995. 60 mins.

Popular mythology attributes great cultural shifts to the rave culture of the early 1990s; the undermining of the mercenary Tory economic model, the metamorphosis of football hooligan firms into shiny, happy chappies, not to mention the legitimisation of baggy, fluorescent clothing on Top Of The Pops. In our own little backwater it has been credited with unifying young Protestants and Catholics in a kind of Dionysian dancefloor reverie, altering mindsets in the years leading up to the paramilitary ceasefires. It is this notion that Desmond Bell sets out to explore in his documentary Dancing On Narrow Ground. Filmed during the summer of 1994, it was originally intended for BBC NI but was never broadcast there, instead surfacing only this year on the internet, a forgotten cultural artefact brought into the sober light of day many years after the party has ended.

From the beginning it is clear that the director had high ambitions for his work, framing it with a quote from political theorist Gramsci and attempting to evoke ritual and proverb in his own voiceover (‘That summer they danced like they never danced before, they danced to drive away evil spirits, they danced to save their souls, they danced in the darkest hour that comes before the dawn’). The effect is somewhat diminished by the accompanying footage of people attending an illegal rave on the north-west coast - thumping beats, high-pitched synth stabs and some dodgy live MC’ing facilitate an array of uninhibited dance moves; we have a demented chicken trying to fly, a boxer warming up, a man competing in an imaginary downhill slalom, and an impressive windmill manoeuvre on a slope. Someone catches fire and a few fellow ravers rush over to thump out the flames on his back. You get the picture.

And then the inevitable political context; stock news footage of coffins draped in tricolours, Paisley on a rant, Greysteel. All is not well outside the bubble.

Over the course of the next hour the film documents the lives of two groups of late teens from working-class areas on opposite sides of the sectarian divide, one from Lenadoon in west Belfast and one from Orangefield in the east. These are kids whose daily lives are inexorably linked to the conflict which surrounds them. Several have had family and friends murdered. For some, boredom and unemployment has led to petty crime and time spent in a young offenders’ institution (ironically this is heralded as a mixed space where both religions mingle amicably). At times Bell and his crew take a back seat and simply record their subjects as they drink carry-outs in the park or go clubbing, but the director also interacts with them in front of the camera. The resulting footage is interspersed and overlaid with individual interviews, often revealing uncomfortable truths about the society which has coloured their green or orange worldview.

Kelly’s nightclub in Portrush is the focal point of the alternate universe cherished by the Orangefield friends, ‘a change of atmosphere’ from the drudgery that characterises their midweek lives. And who can blame their enthusiasm? In Belfast the highlight of some evenings is to call out the emergency services for ‘a bit of excitement’ but on their pilgrimages to the coast, face-contortingly strong E’s open the portal to a transcendent world of frenetic, euphoric dance anthems, whistles, glowsticks, masks, and convivial, serotonin-induced encounters with strangers.

Religious identity is surrendered to collective experience. However, as the debris is swept up at the end of the night and the clubbers drift back to their buses the limitations of this temporary escapism are laid bare by two members of the group, Greer and Jonny. The former, having gone out with a Catholic girl inside the club is resigned to that fact that any attempts at a relationship outside of this environment ‘wouldn’t work’.

The latter explains how, despite the potential for social interaction with likeminded people, no-one would be willing to attend an afterparty in an area perceived to be of the ‘other’ religion due to safety concerns.

It is precisely this social paralysis that Bell and his crew set out to challenge, by attempting to arrange a day trip and clubbing excursion to Portrush involving the two groups. However, on the chosen, symbolic date of 12th July, the Lenadoon minibus fails to turn up, leaving Bell sitting in the pouring rain before retreating, bewildered and dejected, to the pub to await word. After a frustrating few hours, a youth worker is dispatched to break the bad news; there is a perception of Portrush as a holiday retreat for Protestants and they are uncomfortable with the idea of going there over the biggest Protestant holiday of the year. Bell’s mission is now scuppered, leaving the viewer feeling a bit sorry for him. However, we have to question the wisdom of his arrangements and concede that maybe the Lenadoon kids have a point. Having shot himself in the foot with a contentious choice of date and location, the film has nowhere much else to go and peters out in the final quarter.

This leaves us with some depressingly predictable conclusions. Far from heralding in some kind of utopian, secular zeitgeist, rave offered only a few hours respite from the fissures that run deepest in poor, urban communities. Despite the announcement of the ceasefires towards the end of the film, Bell’s subsequent fireside chat with the Lenadoon kids reveals that the ‘us and themmuns’ mentalities that are prevalent in both groups are not going to dissipate anytime soon.

However, it would be unjust not to mention that the strongest voice in the film is a positive one.

Kerri-Ann of the Orangefield group articulately expresses empathy towards Catholic communities and disapproval of the myopic prejudices of her male counterparts. Given the recent embarrassing furore over civic flag-flying it is a pity that such sentiments are still an appendix to those who shout the loudest and hypnotise the news crews with burning cars and breaking glass.

By Jason Mills.

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NO.63

WITH WINGS AS EAGLES: Fifty Years of Missile Manufacturing in Belfast

Book. Author. Eric Waugh, (Belfast: Thales Air Defence, 2003)

The fifty-year anniversary of missile manufacturing in Belfast might have passed unremarked were it not for this sumptuously illustrated book, written (in haste, he tells us in the Preface) by Belfast Telegraph journalist Eric Waugh. Some people might wonder whether the construction of lethal weaponry, with its capacity to kill and destroy, is really a topic for celebration, but in a sobering argument Waugh reminds us of the inexorable logic of the Cold War. The possession of hi-tech weapons (which were, he admits, fatally dangerous in local conflicts in the post-war period) was the main reason that there was no nuclear holocaust in the ongoing attrition between East and West in the Cold War era. The underlying premise of the book is then, that as well as bringing jobs and technology to the city, the missile manufacturing industry meant that Belfast helped to keep the global peace in the latter part of the twentieth century.

The story starts in earnest with an anecdote.

When the German fleet was scuttled at Scapa Flow after the First World War most of the Kaiser’s ships had, as part of their ventilation equipment, fans made in Belfast. Imagine, Belfast-built shipping hardware at the bottom of the sea in the early decades of the twentieth century. Anyway, thus begins the proud tradition of Belfast manufacturers indiscriminately selling military hardware to belligerent nations. Cantering through the first part of the twentieth century we find that in the lead up to the Second World War the British government took control of the nascent Short Brothers enterprise and placed it under effective government control, making the Bristol Bombay aircraft. In a fascinating piece of Belfast history, Waugh notes that in May 1938 the British government organised an Empire Air Day pageant at which crowds watched preposterously outdated biplanes making smoke bombing runs on fake civilian buildings in the new Harbour airport.

The author poignantly realises that many of those watching this event would have experienced the real thing in Belfast a few years later.

The Second World War, Waugh asserts, taught the world that an ‘armed peace’ was necessary. So the Cold War began and missiles prospered. Shorts set up their Castlereagh plant to undertake research into missile technology. Here the story hots up, since missilery (the science of making and firing ballistic missiles) needed to bring together various technologies which were still in their infancy. Shorts ‘were soon manufacturing the first general purpose analogue computer to be out into quantity production in the British Isles’. And they were doing this beside the Dale Farm milk factory in Castlereagh. There are some fine photographs of the gadgetry created around this period in Castlereagh. There is a production line of analogue computers, like oversized pinball machines. Rectangular daleks. A man sits in one which is an early flight simulator.

Davros, he looks like. And, of course, extermination was on their collective minds. Shorts developed a beautiful gyroscope for a vertical take-off plane. It looks like it could print off till receipts and keep you hovering at the same time.

As the story moves on various bods come to Northern Ireland to take up the managerial reins.

Usually they are of Commonwealth extraction, with an Oxbridge background. You can spot them straightaway in the photos. They stand tall and confident, chin out, utterly absorbed in what they

are saying. The Belfast chaps stand with their hands behind their backs looking nowhere in particular. Their suits don’t fit so well. You can smell engine oil off their clothes. But they made impressive rockets. The GPV, constructed just after the war, was 27 feet long and had a five foot wing span. At least you couldn’t sneak one out in your lunch box. Then they started on surfaceto-air. This lead to the Seacat, the staple of the industry in Belfast for some time to come.

The Seacat needed a new gyroscope. One of the Shorts engineers went to France. There they had a slick new gyroscope in operation.

The engineer realised they were simply using an updated version of a gyroscope first proposed by Hero of Alexander in 100AD. As Waugh notes, sort of, patents don’t last that long, and Conway, Shorts Chief Engineer, decided that, rather than buy it from the French, they’d steal the idea and make their own Hero of Alexander gyroscope.

The Seacat, so to speak, took off, adopted by the British and Swedish Navies.

There is one very confusing chapter in this book. This is not a complaint – more a wonderment. The particular chapter builds up to a moment of Whitehall tension around defence contracts. The photographs accompanying this chapter, however, seem to belong to a different book. But it’s good that they are there. They include images of: a reflective parabolic mirror, larger than a person, which can heat a kettle; a log-trimming machine which makes fence posts; a lie detector (including operator and shifty looking female wired up to it); a defibrillator; a laundry sorting machine (also adaptable to post office use); and an automatic scalp massager and hair washer.

This last is by far the best of a fine bunch. The woman testing it looks like her head is stuck in a fridge.

The story has a happy ending. Thales defence operations published the book and they are the cumulation of the narrative, their weaponry ensuring the liberation of Kosovo. A photograph of Kosovans cheering UN forces (who are armed with the Starstreak missile, proudly made in Belfast) proves this.

And a coda. My copy of With Wings As Eagles came with a torn out, yellowed page from a novel inside the back cover. I can’t trace the book, but it tells the story of the Battle of Beecher Island, in which US forces fought with the Cheyenne and other native American tribes. On the page in question a trapped solider, Jack Stillwell, is confronted with a rattlesnake as he crawls away from the ‘Indians’. He ‘let fly with a cheekful of acid amber tobacco juice’ and the rattlesnake slithered off. All was saved. Maybe this expulsion was the inspiration for another piece of missile technology. Whatever book the page is torn from unfolds a tale of great suffering and bloodshed, on both sides. It is told is stark, heroic terms. It certainly seems to belong inside the back cover of With Wings As Eagles.

By Colin Graham

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NO.70

A POCKET GUIDE TO NORTHERN IRELAND. 1942.

War & Navy Departments; Washington D.C.

“YOU are going away from home on an important mission – to meet Hitler and beat him on his own ground. For the time being you will be the guest of Northern Ireland.”

In 1942, the Special Service Division of the United States Army printed a small square pamphlet being for the benefit of GIs en route to Norn Iron – something to palm through when they got antsy waiting for their shot at Hitler; to keep them from accidentally dying in a pub brawl over Protestant ascendancy or transubstantiation; to ensure they could jingle their pay packets and tell a ha’p’ny from a guinea.

A Pocket Guide to Northern Ireland is purposeful as all hell, written in brass-tacks Yank-speak for the boys who’d spend months in Ulster, swimming in Lough Neagh on furlough, hunting on farmers’ land (but only with permission!) and dancing the oak floor of the Ulster Hall to bits. “You will be expected,” page 1 instructs, “to live up to the Irishman’s high opinion of Americans. That’s a real responsibility.” These Ulsterfolk have been to the cinema. They have relatives in Boston. They Know Things...

The guide’s monochrome photos seem stark and Twilight-Zoney – puddles on the Giant’s Causeway; a row of factory workers’ houses and a gas streetlamp, its curled fuse clear; a herd of sheep on a tram line that could be the Ormeau or Antrim: “Even in city streets, you are apt to meet a herd of sheep or cows. Remember the animals have the right-ofway.” It could be called The Pocket Guide to Not Kansas Anymore. Designed to quell culture shock in California dudes who, thanks to geopolitical conflict, suddenly awaken in Carrickfergus, it gives U.S. equivalents for measures of N. Irish population and geography: -Land area = “only slightly larger than the State of Connecticut” -Population of 1,300,000 = “not quite so many as in Los Angeles” -Decent-sized Ulster farms = “hardly larger than ample vegetable gardens” Shades of a pissing contest? Probably. But the guide also makes the Founding Fathers sound like a raft of Irishmen blown off-course after an Ulster away match: “John Dunlop, the printer of our Declaration of Independence, was born in that little town of Strabane”; plus 9 Revolutionary generals, 8 signers of the Declaration, and 14 presidents were born in Ireland or of Irish descent. Statesiders love a good Old World connection, but this is an Army heartsand-minds campaign – play nice with the Allies: You will see soldiers everywhere. The British soldiers are young men, just as you are, and just as full of beans. Hitler wants you not to get along together, and he has history in his favor [...] This is the time both to fool Hitler and to make history. Lean over backwards to make friends with the guy who talks differently, thinks differently, but fights the same war” (p.30-1).

Each section boils sprawling concepts down into drinkable broth: THERE ARE TWO IRELANDS The Southern, shamrock-wearing republic of Eire (puzzlingly neutral in the war) and the Northern side, which “treasures its governmental union with England above all things.”

THE COUNTRY Harps on about “dampness” and predicts you’ll be “homesick for sunshine”.

To cope: “Many people in Ireland wear thick, woolen clothing the year round. [This has changed since the advent of fake tan.] You will be wise to keep yourself warm and dry; pneumonia and bronchitis are common.”

GOVERNMENT This section zooms through 1,000 years struggling against English rule –Flight of the Earls – Protestant settlers – Battle of the Boyne – partition – and now there’s a Parliament. Sort of, like.

EIRE BORDER PROBLEMS pegs Irish neutrality as De Valera’s public pose, but still dangerous: “The Ulster border is 600 miles long and hard to patrol. Axis spies sift back and forth across the border constantly. Be on your guard! The Nazis are trying to find out all about the A.E.F. Watch what you say in public. Enemy ears are listening.”

THE PEOPLE: THEIR CUSTOMS AND MANNERS These were Aran-sweater, fireplace-stoking days, when everyone regaled visitors with tales of Irish history, scenery, and “the extraordinary goings-on of Irish fairyfolk”. Feck rationing; they’ll still fill you with tea (recently an American soldier speaking on a short-wave broadcast said he had drunk more tea during his first 2 weeks in Ireland than he had in his whole life before). These Europeans like their beer at room temp, take rounds seriously, and aren’t into sandwiches or sweets. Cabbage and potatoes are “inevitable”; the scones are “the best in the world”.

There’s “virtually no night life”, but soccer games are so thrilling the cops have to keep order.

Expect zero craic on Sundays, but “nothing will establish friendlier relations between you and the Ulster people than going to church with them”. And finally, know your limits: “Protestants usually do not mingle with Catholics [...] Don’t try to bridge this chasm. Wiser and better equipped people than you have discovered that Ireland is one place where intervention is not blessed, however well intended.”

George Marshall and Bill Clinton didn’t get this briefing.

ABOUT ARGUMENTS: Ulster don’t need no stinking juke joints.

“Conversation is the most highly perfected form of entertainment” and heated pub arguments are the national sport: “In America we don’t hold it against a man because he tells a tall story with a couple of beers under his belt. In Ulster it is quite within the rules of the game to accuse your adversary of not only pig stealing but of actual treason.”

DIFFERENCE IN LANGUAGE Moving pictures have taught them words like “scram” and “guy”, but you’ll be up against “a squib of tea” and “I am after drinking my beer”. One poignant bit of linguistic trivia: “Only married people who have children are called men and women; bachelors and spinsters remain juvenile until the end of their days.”

THE GIRLS Are friendly but Old World. “In the country, dances are comparatively rare, and jive is unknown.

Occasionally, however, you may find a rural frolic in progress” (dogging with tractors?). Uber-mod Belfast, though? Ripe with potential dance partners.

Just don’t try cutting in.

ULSTER AT WAR & PAY-DAY BLUES “Do not forget that a regiment of bank clerks and floorwalkers (the Queen’s Rifles) who hadn’t completed their military training held Calais and made the Dunkerque evacuation possible. [...] Don’t boast about what we have done or will do. Let’s see how we handle ourselves when the going is really tough.”

Ulster’s been hit hard by war in ways North Americans can’t fathom; don’t expect to find chocolate bars or soap at every corner store.

Plus, U.S. soldiers were paid vastly more than British ones: “It is only human nature to wonder why exposure to dying should be quoted at different rates – and such different rates. Don’t be a show-off with your pay. [...] The Ulsterman likes to drive a hard bargain in business affairs and he thinks a spendthrift is a dope.”

MONEY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES In 1942, a £5 note was worth about $20. Despite coins named farthing, florin, sovereign, quid, thruppence and bob, “The people won’t be amused to hear you call it ‘funny money.’”

Whiffs of very peculiar personal experiences sift down through government-issue anonymity via italics, non-sequiturs and ellipses. “Guinea” is defined as 21 shillings, followed by one of the only uses of

italics in the guide: “There is no actual coin or paper of this value now in use. It is simply a quotation of price.” There only use of ellipsis: “Up in the hills you may be offered an illicit concoction known as ‘potheen.’ This is a moonshine whiskey made out of potato mash. Watch it. It’s dynamite . . . ” These tidbits smarted with personal embarrassment and remnants of a stanking hangover – the personal behind the propaganda.

Northern Ireland was, of course, not the only nation Pocket Guided by the U.S. Army. My grandfather; who lived all the rest of his 88 years in Fairport, New York; was based in Iran during the war.

Sure enough, there’s a Pocket Guide to Iran (1943) ... plus Egypt and China and Australia (1943) ... and France and New Guinea (1944) ... These aren’t guides to different countries. They sketch out various flavours of a world where Axis combatants and spies are possibly ubiquitous, and must be defeated.

The first sentence of the Northern Irish guide transforms Ulster into part of the universal battleground.

Fooling Hitler with your Brit-loving? Dodging spies infiltrating from the Irish Free State? Yup. Just another part of the world.

Pocket up, boy. You got a long way to go.

By Emily DeDakis

the vacuum

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NO.73

‘MONKEYS’.

THE DELOREAN TAPES

Television Drama Dir. Danny Boyle. 1989. 60mins.

Monkeys is a TV movie produced and directed by sports enthusiast Danny Boyle for BBC Northern Ireland. The film is elusive; it doesn’t feature anywhere on Boyle’s otherwise pedantic Wikipedia page and the IMDB listing on the subject is as emaciated as the director himself. Information is scant; there is nothing by way of gossip, hearsay, conjecture, tittle-tattle, trivia or goofs. There is no juice. It is something that happened to him and he’d rather not dwell on it, a small bone white scar that he doesn’t want to talk about, clearing his throat and changing the subject. Why won’t you make eye contact, Boyle? But no, he’s thrown down the napkin and left me to pay for lunch, again. I guess you don’t get to be Danny Boyle by writing a lot of cheques. “I need to take this call,” he says over his shoulder, “Monkeys, yeah. We’ll talk.” That phone didn’t ring. I’m no fool. Once again I’m left alone in the booth sucking hard on my milkshake.

I have another lead: Monkeys was written by tousle-haired sometime poet and full time rock and roll animal, Paul Muldoon. But the series of late night telephone messages he leaves are codified and difficult, as sly, elusive and archaic as the poetry he writes. After a disagreement about slant rhyme gets out of hand I fail to return his calls. No help there then. Thanks Paul.

So in the end I had to sit down and watch Monkeys. It was made in 1989 but is set in a 1982 that looks a lot like 1989 and tells the exciting story of the arrest and acquittal of John DeLorean after his entrapment by federal agents on drug trafficking charges. It’s based on a book: The DeLorean Tapes and every frame of this film underlines that fact. It is wordy, it is theatrical, and tight two-shots fly back and forth; there is cross-talk and cross talk and lots and lots of shouting. That’s all there is. There are no women in this film. Well, there are; answering phones or dotted around offices like aspidistras, their perms gently buffeted by the air conditioning. They look like Ted Roger’s glamorous assistants on 321; grinning in giant Buggles specs, facilitating admin off camera.

There are shades of Howard’s Way or Fry and Laurie’s ‘Damn’ corporate executives here: strutting and chest puffing in grey slacks and lemon coloured sweaters. It’s is, in fact, like a grainy, regional BBC version of Miami Vice, full of snorting executives shouting big numbers in to Bakelite phones. But it doesn’t even work on that level, there’s no expansiveness, no visual flair; its talking head cuts to talking head.

DeLorean has a similar story to Paul’s Granddad in A Hard Day’s Night: “I’ve been in a train and a room, and a car and room, and a room and a room”. This isn’t necessarily all Boyle’s fault; the script is as dense as a radio play and is based upon, very closely based upon, actual transcripts of the FBI’s telephone conversations, the telephone not being a particularly visual medium.

And he does attempt to layer the images if the action is necessarily static: there are nicely framed shots of ghostly FBI agents smirking, reflected in the glass of a two-way mirror. Windows and rogue chair arms arc through frames, bisecting the human players or cutting them into neat grids.

This is not artless film making but its attempts to make a thriller out of various fat, often bearded faces, shouting at each other in brutal, kinetically cut close-up is wrong-headed. As is the ending, where the jig is up and a confused, doddering

DeLorean is perched on the end of a sofa staring meekly into space while text scrolls down the screen telling you that he wasn’t convicted of any crimes and the whole thing was a massive waste of time. Maybe Boyle is aping this diminuendo in the structure of the film. In which case it works; this film does feel like a massive waste of time.

Manning Redwood (good name) plays DeLorean as Jimmy Stewart in an Andy Warhol wig, an innocent abroad, the man who knew too little.

The real DeLorean courted what he thought were Colombian drug lords in order to bail out his ailing business, until he got cold feet. Whatever you think about the FBI’s entrapment and his subsequent acquittal, DeLorean went into the arrangement with his eyes open, he would have been complicit in the crime had the crime actually been real.

William Hootkins as James Hoffman is the best thing here; bearded, jolly, angry, seductive and above all sweaty, he schemes his way through the film, half Falstaff, half Iago. But then he’s always great which is why his list of credits includes Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Batman, Flash Gordon and Bergerac. Now that is a pedigree.

In the end this film leaves you asking two questions: what did the FBI hope to achieve in snaring desperate businessmen with the lure of made up drug money. And why on earth was Larry Flynt not in this film? It was the jovial paraplegic pornographer who blew the case wide open, publishing the story in Hustler magazine, and it was he who refused to cooperate with the courts when subpoenaed and when he finally did show up in court he did so in a nappy made from the stars and stripes and was promptly sentenced to fifteen months in prison for defamation of the American flag. Now that’s a movie, Boyle.

Ask Milos Forman.

And I’m still not sure why it’s called Monkeys either.

By John Higgins.

object

NO.74

THE SECRET VISITORS

Book. Author: James White.1957.

1957. A memorable year in NI’s history for three things. (1). Roy Walker was born (2) Cyril Lord opened a new carpet factory in Donaghadee. And (3) James White had a book published called The Secret Visitors.

I love being handed a book that smells musty.

Reminds me of being a kid, and being locked indoors because we’d had yet another wet summer. Even better, this book, The Secret Visitors, looks like it might be the odd cousin of that Enid Blyton Secret Series, like The Secret Island for grownups. And you know what? That’s what it read like. I don’t mean that in a derogatory waysome books you can pick up, devour in an hour or two, and forget a week later, It doesn’t mean they’re not good fun.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. Maybe I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t liked Star Trek as a teen - wait for the hideously embarrassing reveal here- going so far as to start a sci-fi club in third year- we even got to use a room after school & hung a sign saying ‘Starfleet Command” on the door. I have a high threshold for imaginary alien races, is what I’m trying to say. But it was an engaging story. And it might have my all time favourite line in it. I’ll get to that later. Believe me, it’s worth waiting for.

The author was born in Belfast and after spending part of his early life in Canada moved back to Northern Ireland. He is ranked as a ‘second rate sci-fi novelist occasionally producing first rate work’- during his career, he was nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula award.

He was a frustrated doctor- in that he couldn’t afford to become one -and instead has medicine and doctors at the forefront of most of his work.

In fact, his most popular series, General Sector, was set in a hospital space station, which was apparently one of the inspirations behind Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Secret Visitors is largely based in Northern Ireland, which is probably the most fascinating thing about this book. Aliens in Northern Ireland. Aliens who love Northern Irish Scenery. Aliens with a base in Portballintrae. Aliens who demand to be taken to Mount Errigal cause it’s so damn beautiful.

James Lockheart (the protagonist of the novel) is a doctor who gets accidentally gets entangled with the World Security Operation, to treat a prisoner who speaks in a mysterious tongue. They think he might be a foreign spy. It turns out he’s an alien. Sent to holiday on earth by the Interstellar Tourist Agency. And this Agency have now decided they want earth for their own, and to kill most humans while they’re at it, by fermenting a huge, final, catastrophic war. So Lockheart and his WSO compadres, (along with some good Alien agents fighting the Interstellar Tourist Agency) spend most of the novel attempting to stop this war, and the end of life as we know it.

They hatch a plan to convince the Galactic Court that humans are worth saving. And the way to do this is to gather up information on all Earth’s great thinkers, statesmen, artists and musicians and present it to them.

“We haven’t much time, the agent continued quickly. So I suggest we start at once. The library at Portrush will supply all the data we need. “ Yes, you did read that right. Best Line Ever. The library in Portrush saves Civilization. Well, not quite. A really irritating kid does. Because when

the humans are called up before the court, they happen to be hungover. Which is grand, (Hey, who wouldn’t get drunk the night before they have to save the world, eh? ) Unfortunately, their Space Whisky has been spiked with the opposite of truth serum, And as this kid is the only one who didn’t partake of the doctored alcohol, he’s the only one who can convince the aliens of our deservedness to live.

Unfortunately, the Court has been infiltrated by the Interstellar Tourist Agency, and it turns out they had no intention of sparing the human race anyway, so there’s time for a battle scene in which the humans lead other species to fight against the baddies, thus proving their worth. Anyway, before that the doctor saves a great squishy creature-ship from death, (because no species in the universe apart from humans knows how to operate anymore- they are too bored) Just as well, as the squishy creature-ship eventually saves humankind by helping in the aforementioned big battle scene at the end. The doctor is also in love with one of the aliens. There’s a lot going on.

To conclude: the one thing I took away from this book (apart from wanting to visit Portrush library) is that I can’t help but feel there is a strange parallel with the Evil Intergalactic Tourist Agency and Northern Ireland Tourist Board.

Our Time, Our Space eh?

It’s not every day ‘our wee country’ (God, I hate that phrase) gets to play such a big role in an unusual situation. I want the book to be better than it is for that reason. The Secret Visitors is more likely to be stripped of it’s innards, so it’s atypical seventies cover can hang as a framed curio in a trendy bar. In saying that, if you see it in a second hand bookshop? Buy it. It’s worth it for page 44 alone.

By Vittoria Cafolla.

the vacuum

the vacuum