A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water - Carl Reiner
It might be nice to look at but that is about the height of it. Where I live there was ice still to melt from the last heavy snow a few weeks back when a fresh batch arrived to reinforce it. Now it is everywhere. Even the kids are fed up with it. A novelty at the start they soon grow to realise just how limiting it is. Getting off school is ok but when they are condemned to the house boredom soon sets in.
I like the sense of cooperation and patience that our seriously inclement weather has brought. People moved to assist and steady each other. Road rage seemed to have been reduced as motorists recognised their mutual difficulties. Most of those who fell seemed to have been women. On a few occasions I had to stop to get women on their feet or pick up their belongings after a fall. Courtesy of my wife I had a pair of snow grippers on my shoes which meant I could move pretty freely. Everybody should stock a pair. Their value is to be marvelled at. And they are not a gimmick but actually do what it says on the tin.
Snow, despite its challenges can bring fun. But tonight we saw how it can be the harbinger of grief and loss. A fifteen year old girl dies after her improvised sleigh hit a tree on a Cork golf course. A mother and her child both lose their lives when their car skidded on ice a few miles up the road from us. What emptiness in those households on Christmas morning. The fatal season rather than the festive for the families and their loved ones lost.
The only creatures that seem to enjoy it no matter how long it lasts are dogs. Each morning at the weekends myself and a friend walk the dogs. They love rummaging through the snow laden fields where they can charge around free from the rigours of the choke chains around their necks. A dog’s life doesn’t seem so bad after all. The ease with which they adapt to the extreme cold amazes me. We are well wrapped up while they go pretty much as the day they were born.
During the blanket protest with no windows in the cells and the snow falling outside, which was sometimes driven into the cells by the howling wind, the thought crossed my mind that freezing to death was no longer a remote possibility. A screw commented that he expected to open a cell door some morning and find a prisoner dead from exposure. Most of his colleagues, being the fine Christian gentlemen that they were, probably prayed for it, their bibles firmly in hand. Yet the bible was a source of joy to me. I could stand on it while speaking out the window and keep my feet off the sub zero concrete floor.
I am old enough to recall the big freeze of 1963. Memories of the snow in the back yard being higher than my small frame are vivid in my mind. The channel my father and other men dug through the street to allow some form of movement probably saved the lives of some of the older residents in the Lower Ormeau Road’s Bagot Street. It was about then I first heard my father’s joke about the difference between a snowman and a snow woman – snowballs.
My mother nursed our then youngest sister through it and when the thaw set in thanked her god for his mercy in protecting a new born, only to lose her to pneumonia at the onset of spring. She lies buried under a simple marker placed on her grave by my mother saying ‘my Pauline.’
God isn’t good, god isn’t bad. God just isn’t. It took her many years to realise that but by the time she did I think she was all the happier for it. No longer tormented as to why a good god might deprive her of her child, she could reconcile herself to nature. Better that she did. Imagine going to face a monster like that the other side of the grave.
It is supposed to be 10 below outside. Time to turn the heating back on before the temperature differential levels out. It is the only way to ward of the invasive chill. Snowed in, snowed under, snowed off.
Painting A Cold Floor by Raymond Watson, from the series The Shot Lock
Anthony i could be a right bollix and say i'm having a good laugh at yous over there but i'm not that cruel. On another note Chopper had an article in the Andytout a few weeks back about winter on the blanket protest, don't know how yous did it, if i never see snow again it'd be too soon.
ReplyDeleteOh aye it's 23c here, cold for this time of year!!!
MartyDownUnder,
ReplyDeletenever got to see that Chopper piece. The winters there could be severe. Now it's almost time to walk to dog.
Mackers, the piece Chopper had in was very similar to the one you have written. It was about how the cold and the snow addred to the already horrendous conditions that you endured on the blocks.
ReplyDeleteVery sad and very touching about your mum and sister Pauline.
That type of loss is beyond comprehension, yet for people like me, sadly, when everything else falls away all we have is belief.
I agree with you about the dogs. Our poor little mutt loves rolling about in the snow, while the cats look on, usually perched on a window next to the radiator.
Hate to keep bringing this up, however has anyone else noticed that when Marty went missing so did his 'cara' Larry.
Albert, said they have eloped and are now together chittering away on twitter.
Personally I think there is something more sinister.
Being a bit slow about such things, it is a mystery to me how the small birds survive in such weather.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you're using the ice grippers. I did wonder myself how those on the blanket, with the windows broken, managed not to turn into icicles. I can't imagine such conditions, obviously, while I sit here merely moving buckets around as our bedroom roof leaks! Which is an everyday occurrence in your latitude, I reckon!
ReplyDeleteAt least the Steig Larssen books may find a suitable mood in you two admirers, sort of a "pathetic fallacy" in the literary sense of the term! Our dogs rebel even against rain, refusing to go out to relieve themselves, fighting for bones, and moping. With only one, and malleable, yours may be more eager and happier to romp.
Curious as to your logical move between snow and atheism, Anthony!
ReplyDelete'There is snow..God', ah, I get it!
I hope that was a protestant bible you were standing on.
On a more serious not, I am sorry about your mother and sister.
John McGirr,
ReplyDeleteat some point I hope to get back to you on some of the many points you raised in your contributions rather than queue jump as I am now. I have not ignored the discussion. In fact it is a great discussion. Just with time constraints and a heap of comments building up it is not always easy to get to them.
Thanks for your comments on the deaths but these things come to us all. My mother remained devout after it for so long but gave up her belief some time before she died. Too weak in the end to read, the last book she had read to her was Dawkins' The God Delusion. I think the cover up of child abuse more than the abuse itself was what finally broke the link for her.
A Protestant bible! I honestly don't know. I think we all got the same bible but I never read it. I did on the boards just prior to going on the Blanket. Once on it a Board of Visitors woman asked if we had any requests. I glibly commented 'reading material.' She told me I had the bible to which I responded what would we do for cigarette paper or writing paper. She was livid and I told her I would come out the other side of the protest without having read the bible. So I didn't read it. I read religious magazines. Reality was great as was Louis Watt's Religion and Communism (or Communism and Religion - can't remember the order of words). I think it was in Reality that I first discovered Camus and Sartre. Even read about Sophie Mutter, then a 16 year old violinist. So it was not all negative.
I don't mind people having religious beliefs as long as they don't impose them on me or try to colonise the secular with them. I dislike the intolerance of many religious types but always loved people like Helder Camara.
But in the end I simply fail to comprehend the supernatural. It will not compute.
Mick,
ReplyDeletesurvival of the fittest I think. They have evolved to be able to survive!!
Our egocentric view of the world prevents us seeing how other creatures manage quite well.
Nuala,
I know what you say about belief being all there is for some. My point is that while belief can get people through adversity that is not evidence of its truth status. I tend to think of two soldiers on opposing sides being convinced that god is going to get them through in their war against the other.
Fionnuchu,
leaks - an absolute nuisance.
The blanket was cold in winter but we survived it. My dog was out in the snow for two hours this morning. She loves it.
We do our best to keep the small birds coming into our garden for food. Tortured with magpies though and they terrorise the cats, a form of rough justice I suppose.
ReplyDeleteMackers, how would you account for mediums and psychics being able to give accurate details from beyond the grave.
ReplyDeleteI know this is absolutely not your thing, however I would be interested in hearing someone explain it away for me. I have been told things by mediums that they never ever could have known and I just wondered what your take would be on that.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAM, I remember reading a book that mentioned radiators being switched on in Long Kesh during winter. Obviously with no windows the radiators wouldn't be of much use but were the windows fixed and/or heaters on after the second hunger strike? Forgive my ignorance and also the fact that I have no idea what book it was that mentioned it but I am curious.
ReplyDeleteI knew the prisoners had to break the windows because of the fumes from the chemicals used during the no-wash protest.
The book referred to Bobby Sands and the cold cells during the spring before he died and how he couldn't imagine the following winter for the prisoners. The book explained that he didn't know there would be radiators on that coming winter.
Apologies if I got my facts wrong.
Nuala,
ReplyDeleteI don't believe any of that. I think they play on emotions and tell suggestible and vulnerable people what they want to hear after squeezing info out of them. They could never tell anything to somebody they didn't speak to. I have never known of one being able to reproduce it in a lab. Nor one who predicted the lotto numbers. In some ways it reminds me of Lourdes. No one yet has gone with one leg and come back with two.
Simon there was a set of double white pipes. that ran along the wall beneath the window. They could be scalding so we couldn't stand on them. But the heat they gave out went out the window. I think in February 79 Lisburn had the lowest temperature in Europe one night and the heating failed. We blamed the screws but apparently it was a genuine malfunction.
ReplyDeleteIn 79 the windows were reconfigured. It provided more warmth but still allowed a lot of heat to escape.
'I knew the prisoners had to break the windows because of the fumes from the chemicals used during the no-wash protest.'
They were already broken by the time I arrived.
The radios were on every winter so I am not sure what that book referred to. I don't recall the spring of 81 being particularly cold.
Mackers, I don't think they can be dismissed as easy as that.
ReplyDeleteI know for a fact they have relayed messages that they could not possibly have known.
Closed lab conditions are hardly the setting for contacting the dead.
No sceptic has ever gave me a satisfactory answer as to how mediums do what they do, and I know it to be true because I have listened to it first hand.
Nuala,
ReplyDeletewhy would a lab not be the a good setting for contacting the dead? If we believed in such a thing surely a lab would be the best place to contact a scientist? I think it is like faith healing, another scam.
Anthony- Thanks for your reply. I might be barking up the wrong tree. My memory might be flawed and since I can't remember the book it probably is.
ReplyDeleteFionnuala- There is a lot out there we don't understand but I think psychics and mediums often take advantage of people who are desperate for an answer.
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ReplyDeleteIf the dead could contact the living, would they really do it through complete arseholes like most mediums are?
ReplyDeletefionnuala perry:
ReplyDeleteif you wouldnt mind giving us more details of the circumstances of your encounter with your medium like where did it take place, how did you learn of them (or they of you?), was it prearranged, was there any way they or any of your party knew each other. what did they tell you? (exactly) how many other people knew this?
i could go on...seriously give me the details and i will tell you how they did it.
I was once approached on the street by an Indian 'medium' who out of the blue proceeded to tell me my life story, all very impressive until he asked me for money at which point I told him why would I pay you to tell me shit I already know! A charlatan but a good one no doubt and I can see how he could've easily taken others in.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the likes of John Edwards you can see how he is being incredibly vague and deliberately ambiguous,
fishing for someone to acknowledge the slightest bit of waffle and then he plays on it, always leading the participant on. In these cases you'll find the people he and others like him prey upon WANT to belief and they use it to their advantage. Also his shows have been shown to be heavily edited and you don't get to see the very many 'misses', only a handful of the random things he throws out individuals in the studio audience relate to
Anthony,
ReplyDelete"In some ways it reminds me of Lourdes. No one yet has gone with one leg and come back with two."
In 2009, I was in Medjugorje (long story!). You would not believe the sheer madhouse that the place is: people staring at the sun until it "danced" in the sky, weeping statues, apparitions that only the visionaries can see, chance coincidences that are interpreted to have a divine origin. It reminded me of a line in a Bruce Springsteen song:
"Struck me kinda funny, seemed kind of funny sir to me,
how at the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe."
Then again, any one of the pilgrims there seemed more content and fulfilled than I am, so who's the bigger bollocks at the end of the day?
Nuala,
ReplyDeletecome on it's a mind game skill they possess. Don;t tell me you fall for that garbage. Take a magician. When you see a magician sawing a woman in two, it looks real but obviously he is not actually sawing the woman in two. So then you see her legs are to the left and her head 20 feet to the right and you would say she's definitely in two pieces. It's a mind game that he is playing with the audience. It's a skill that he required over many months if not years of training. Those mediums are doing the exact same thing. They're feasting on the vulnerabilities of your mind. For instance they will tell someone well you had an uncle named John who died who loved you dearly and he loved to drink. Chances are they did. But they will never pull out an uncommon name, they troll their client for info and are a load of bull. Or as you say in Belfast bollocks.
A dog lover, whose dog was a female and 'in heat,' agreed to look after and house her neighbor's male dog while he was away on vacation.
ReplyDeleteShe had a large house and believed that she could keep the dogs apart ... but as she was drifting off to sleep she heard an awful howling and moaning sound. She rushed downstairs and found the dogs locked together, in obvious pain and unable to disengage, as so frequently happens when dogs mate.
Unable to separate them and perplexed as to what to do next, although it was late, she called the vet, who answered in a very grumpy voice.
Once she explained the problem to him, the vet said. "Hang up the phone and place it down alongside the dogs. I will then call you back and the noise of the ringing will make the male lose his erection and be able to withdraw."
"Do you think that will work?" she asked.
Well... "It just worked for me" he replied.
Ben dunne him of dunne stores and of being kidnapped by the RA back in the day has said that he will now vote Sinn Fein and donate to the party-
ReplyDeleteI heard that shergar contacted a
medium looking a postal vote
Michaelhenry,
ReplyDeleteif any party knows how to get the dead to vote without a medium it is SF
Mackers, I may be wrong, however I always thought labs were places where experiments and other and scientific research took place, really think a setting like that a bit undignified. Mediums do not claim to provide scientific proof, however in my case on all occassions they provided pretty accurate details of things they could never have possibly known.
ReplyDeleteI do not want to go into personal family stuff.
Gerard, no one else knew the details, the medium was a total stranger. She did not pry or ask personal questions, she just told me that she had very little control over the reading.
She told me things that my lifelong friends would not know.
She called me by a name that only the person in question ever called me and no-one else ever used it.
She spoke about my life now and my life as a child, she spoke about very personal family stuff.
She gave accurate and previously un-discussed knowledge of my mother who was ill at the times sickness.
If she was a con, well she should be somewhere making millions.
mise eire, I would say the native Americans would have the edge on this one!
ReplyDeleteNuala,
ReplyDeleteI find the whole lot undignified. But a lab is my view as good a place as any if the people feel comfortable. In my view there is no supernatural so I buy into none of it. I am absolutely certain that none of them will be able to tell me one single thing about me if they do not know me in advance. I find them a scam exploiting the most vulnerable of people, those grief stricken.
Mackers, it is usually the ultra religious who find mediums 'undignified'
ReplyDeleteNo-one preyed on my vulnerability or emotions I went with a lot of clarity and expected nothing, what I heard absolutely amazed me, still does. There was no hidden questions, no trick unsuspecting little inuendos, she basically just got on with it.
Ryan, she did pull out a quite uncommon name, my whole name in gaelic. I was christened in gaelic and my name is pronounced and spelt quite different from the one I use.
michaelhenry, hope the Master does not contact a medium, there will be a queue around the block for days.
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ReplyDeleteMise Eire,
ReplyDeleterepost it. It is less complicated if you do it
For those unfamiliar with the H Block struggle the painting might be a little confusing and definitely for religious people maybe indirectly offensive.
ReplyDeleteThe article and painting complement one and other the minimalism in the painting is extremely deceptive.
The austere black background the vast emptiness of both inner and outer space the naked cold feet exposing man not only to the harsh elements of nature but also the cold inhuman confinement a living death waiting each moment on being immersed into final darkness.
The red yellow and white of the holy bible a diminutive source of warmth perhaps literally for some and figuratively for others the bright clours in a sense a source of hope in the stark darkness.
I don’t see it as a simple case of survival of the fittest more a testament of the will to endure by shear will power and the ability to adapt which by all accounts the ingenuity of the protesters would prove having no choice but to constantly adopt in the ever changing struggle of captive and captor.
The article speaks for itself very moving and tragic with some powerful mental imagery reflecting upon adapting and changing through the good and the sad what we had and that we have lost.
Thanks Anthony very moving words and much for me to ponder upon as I have a tendency to look at symbolism and meaning.
Ryan and Marty Down Under
ReplyDeleteVery much my own position
Tain Bo
‘For those unfamiliar with the H Block struggle the painting might be a
little confusing and definitely for religious people maybe indirectly
offensive.’
They are not the most difficult to offend, always wanting to elevate their own opinions to a plateau above every body else. A chemist might even ask for the right to refuse a woman a morning after pill on the grounds of his religious opinion. Imagine a Liverpool supporter was to refuse a Manchester United supporter the morning after pill and sent them on their way with a lecture in Liverpoology.
Few of us went in for that type of reflection. It comes with later years. Standing on the bible was never viewed as sacrilegious or profane. It was purely functional. For people like me who viewed it like any other work of fiction, it could as easily have been a Ludlum novel. The thicker the better. At the end of the day a book is a book regardless of what mystical powers some readers may ascribe to it. I respect books and can’t abide by book burners, whether they be Terry the Terrible or the Nazis. But there are occasions where needs must.
Alfie
‘In 2009, I was in Medjugorje (long story!). You would not believe the sheer madhouse that the place is.’
But I can, all too easily!
‘any one of the pilgrims there seemed more content and
fulfilled than I am, so who's the bigger bollocks at the end of the day?’
Them