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| Daugava River, Riga |
For around 16 years I lived within a few hundred yards of the Lagan. I swam in it, sailed on it, walked along it when on parole from the H Blocks, and was even arrested on it one dark Thursday evening in February 1973. It was the same night that Slade went straight into Number 1 on Top Of The Pops with Cum On Feel the Noize. It was the first time this had happened since the Beatles pulled it off with Get Back four years earlier, and despite being a Slade skin, I missed it.
Due to being arrested - for sailing the river in a Rag Day contraption constructed by students with little regard for health and safety - the four of us missed TOTP, sitting it out in Willowfield RUC station with the cops winding us up for being daft and praising themselves for having saved us from drowning. There may have been some truth in both views.
Prior to getting to the station one of them had hit me a cuff for being what he called a smart fucker. When they beamed the searchlight on us and ordered us to pull in at their side of the river I urged my three companions to ignore them and to guide the boat to the Lower Ormeau Road side of the river and beyond the long arm of the law. Once somebody ventured the opinion that they would shoot at us and another said he couldn't swim, there seemed little choice but to acquiesce. Even though I could swim I wasn't for diving in to the ice cold waters. I muttered 'black bastards' as we drifted in no great hurry towards the cops.
Once on the embankment, the peelers began asking each of us who would own up to the black bastards comment. I was amazed they heard it, but the sound of my voice had carried over the still waters. Everybody said they didn't know, that it came from behind them. When it came to me I followed suit and said I didn't know either as it came from behind me as well. The cop asked where I was on the boat and I told him at the back, at which we all began laughing. That's how I got my cuff. It was more a glis of the ear than an act of violence.
When they got us to the station they offered us tea and gave us no hassle, driving us back to our own side of the river once they had taken our details, or what they thought were our details. A week or so later I was in court for something else and bumped into one of the cops who caught us at the river. He commented that the name I was in court under was not the same one I gave at the station. While I am not so sure he was right, providing a bum name to the cops would not have been a first for me. Either way, he didn't much care, and that was the end of it.
Those were the days when I was still young enough to know everything and had not yet been cured of that teenage reckless courage which infects so many in those tender years. So when my teenage son told me a few years ago about being chased by An Garda at Halloween who confiscated his fireworks but gave him back his cider, I sort of knew the feeling. Don't tell your da how to suck eggs.
When I travel to cities in Ireland like Cork, Derry and Limerick I make a point of seeking out the river. I am too familiar with Dublin to give the Liffey a second thought. The Mersey in Liverpool is another but I used the ferry rather than walked its banks. I recall writing a postcard to Pat Sheehan, then still in prison as I made the ferry across the Mersey. Same when I hit Amsterdam and its canals where I have boated, buoyed along by having sampled high tea before embarking. Amsterdam coffee shops are famous for their high tea. In Krakow about eight years ago I arose early the morning after we arrived, not too discombobulated after a long night spent supping Wild Turkey bourbon, and made the short distance to the Vistula, strolling the walkway once there. Six years ago along with my wife, we stood over the Seine in Paris, thinking of the words of Anatole France that the law in its majestic equality forbade rich and poor alike to sleep under its bridges.
This is a long and probably convoluted way of conveying the sense of attachment that I have to rivers. In any city, not everybody who lives there knows a particular pub, shop, cinema, sporting facility or church. But everybody, I reckon, knows of the river. So going to meet the river is in some metaphysical way an embrace of the people or the various cultures within the city. In my mind, a river is the melting pot through which everything from the city flows.
In Riga last Saturday, I set out for a walk along the banks of the Daugava. The thought of its source being close to the Volga caused me to think of the battle of Stalingrad. Rivers feature in many war histories. Wars transform them into natural defence barriers, fought for and against with great fervour. The battle of the Boyne, close to where I now live, has a huge cultural significance despite being a skirmish considered against some of the great battles waged around other rivers.
Prior to getting to the station one of them had hit me a cuff for being what he called a smart fucker. When they beamed the searchlight on us and ordered us to pull in at their side of the river I urged my three companions to ignore them and to guide the boat to the Lower Ormeau Road side of the river and beyond the long arm of the law. Once somebody ventured the opinion that they would shoot at us and another said he couldn't swim, there seemed little choice but to acquiesce. Even though I could swim I wasn't for diving in to the ice cold waters. I muttered 'black bastards' as we drifted in no great hurry towards the cops.
Once on the embankment, the peelers began asking each of us who would own up to the black bastards comment. I was amazed they heard it, but the sound of my voice had carried over the still waters. Everybody said they didn't know, that it came from behind them. When it came to me I followed suit and said I didn't know either as it came from behind me as well. The cop asked where I was on the boat and I told him at the back, at which we all began laughing. That's how I got my cuff. It was more a glis of the ear than an act of violence.
When they got us to the station they offered us tea and gave us no hassle, driving us back to our own side of the river once they had taken our details, or what they thought were our details. A week or so later I was in court for something else and bumped into one of the cops who caught us at the river. He commented that the name I was in court under was not the same one I gave at the station. While I am not so sure he was right, providing a bum name to the cops would not have been a first for me. Either way, he didn't much care, and that was the end of it.
Those were the days when I was still young enough to know everything and had not yet been cured of that teenage reckless courage which infects so many in those tender years. So when my teenage son told me a few years ago about being chased by An Garda at Halloween who confiscated his fireworks but gave him back his cider, I sort of knew the feeling. Don't tell your da how to suck eggs.
When I travel to cities in Ireland like Cork, Derry and Limerick I make a point of seeking out the river. I am too familiar with Dublin to give the Liffey a second thought. The Mersey in Liverpool is another but I used the ferry rather than walked its banks. I recall writing a postcard to Pat Sheehan, then still in prison as I made the ferry across the Mersey. Same when I hit Amsterdam and its canals where I have boated, buoyed along by having sampled high tea before embarking. Amsterdam coffee shops are famous for their high tea. In Krakow about eight years ago I arose early the morning after we arrived, not too discombobulated after a long night spent supping Wild Turkey bourbon, and made the short distance to the Vistula, strolling the walkway once there. Six years ago along with my wife, we stood over the Seine in Paris, thinking of the words of Anatole France that the law in its majestic equality forbade rich and poor alike to sleep under its bridges.
This is a long and probably convoluted way of conveying the sense of attachment that I have to rivers. In any city, not everybody who lives there knows a particular pub, shop, cinema, sporting facility or church. But everybody, I reckon, knows of the river. So going to meet the river is in some metaphysical way an embrace of the people or the various cultures within the city. In my mind, a river is the melting pot through which everything from the city flows.
Rivers are a body of water that can connect towns along its path, so to some, a river can represent travel. In some cases, its running water can conjure up thoughts of tranquility. In some songs, a river’s dark depths and the secrets it may cover help create a sense of foreboding.
In Riga last Saturday, I set out for a walk along the banks of the Daugava. The thought of its source being close to the Volga caused me to think of the battle of Stalingrad. Rivers feature in many war histories. Wars transform them into natural defence barriers, fought for and against with great fervour. The battle of the Boyne, close to where I now live, has a huge cultural significance despite being a skirmish considered against some of the great battles waged around other rivers.
The intention was to walk a kilometer in one direction, then turn back on myself and cover the same distance. 10k later I made it back to our hotel, a sample bottle of Connemara whiskey lighter.
I had got lost as a result of wandering up a peninsula each time I crossed a bridge, thinking that the peninsula was not in fact a peninsula but a straight route back to Riga's Old City. For some reason as I wandered down a forest path, I began to wonder if there were bears in Riga. I'd make a good feed for one - plenty of meat and much too slow to win a race against one.
There are many rivers I would like to see before I retire for that eternal dreamless sleep. The River Plate, separating Montevideo in Uruguay from Argentina's Buenos Aires, a receptacle for so many of the disappeared from the Argentine Dirty War. The Volga on which rested the city of Stalingrad, the site of perhaps the most pitiless battle of World War 2. The Nyabarongo in Kigali, where so many victims of the Hutu genocide were unceremoniously dumped. Cry me a river.
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To a river so deep
I must be looking for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it's too hard to cross
- Billy Joel
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The Lagan at low tide when the gasworks was there was....breathtaking.
ReplyDeleteCaught the throat like Jack the Ripper.
The women used to take the weans down for a whiff if they had colic or other chest complaints.
A certain logic I suppose because ye'd cough up whatever ailed ye 😆