 | |
|
Sean Ward was such a fan, maintaining an intense interest in many sports. His preference for GAA did not diminish his passion for other activities such as soccer or golf. Not hard to imagine what he would be doing today were he still with us – watching Manchester United take on Wolves at Molineux, which is currently underway.
Sean lived at the bottom of our street, right at the entrance to the estate. After his passing it took months for me to adjust to not seeing him holding court at the front of his house with some passerby. Stand talking to Sean and the conversation was peppered with car horns honking while drivers signaled to him as they passed on the Beamore Road. It was the same out shopping with him or walking the dogs. He was known by so many people.
I met him shortly after we moved into the estate. Some electrical fault occurred, and a neighbor suggested asking him to have a look. Up he came and within minutes told me he had recognised me from the television interviews that I had given over the years. We became firm friends.
Often, we would take to the fields, the race course or Bettystown beach to walk our dogs. Swiper and Cleo. Sean would often be referred to as the dog whisperer due to his endless advice, solicited or not, on how to maintain a dog. He never saw fault in an animal, insisting that the owner not the pet was the problem. When Swiper died Copper took his place. When Cleo died, Luna missed out on the journeys as Sean didn’t feel as fit as he once had, tending to opt for the short walk close to home rather than the long distances we had covered when conversation was for the most part consumed by politics.
He was an avid reader and had a keen sense of the political lay of the land. Most books I picked up for him were about politics. He loved it when publishers would send a book to TPQ for review, sometimes even before it was published. He'd finish them in a day or two before I would send them off to the reviewer or review them myself. I persuaded him to try Kindle, from which he never turned back. Like myself he felt they were a real convenience when travelling abroad.
Never short of something to say on any topic, he would regale me with opinions about the likely trajectory of the political parties, rarely calling it wrong. He had a particular interest in the North as he hailed from Kilcoo. We once drove up to South Armagh to visit the grave of Raymond McCreesh. Sean had attended Raymond’s funeral in 1981. He was of a view that the direction Sinn Fein had gone off in rendered the deaths of the hunger strikers and just about everybody else futile. He was never ideological, and because of his can-do attitude he had a strong pragmatic streak running through him: do what works was probably a concise way of summing him up. His intellectual curiosity led him to enjoy meeting former blanket men, hunger strikers and others from the world of politics who would call to see me. He joined a few H Block denizens for a drink one day in the Pheasant, laughing at some of the funnier blanket protest moments. Yet he remained in awe of no one. If you did what it said on your tin Sean was fine with it but would have called out those who he felt were bluffers.
He relished winding people up about Sinn Fein, often expressing the view that he found it difficult to comprehend how people could hang onto every word of a gobshite, as he termed one party personality.
I was a frequent visitor to his home where we would sit and probably bore his wife Ann out of her tree with our waffle about soccer and politics. Yet he was a family man who cherished his wife, daughters and grandchildren. Before I met him he had lost a daughter, Kelly Ann, to illness. Anytime we discussed her passing the pain was etched on his face and the conversation heavy and sombre.
When we got our free travel passes he suggested we hit a few spots about the country. In the summer of 2023 we set out for Galway but the train was crowded so we ended up taking one to Portlaoise, only to change our minds before reaching that destination after I persuaded him it was probably the most drab town in Ireland. The only thing of note in it was the jail and we didn’t really want to go there. We jumped off at Kildare on a glorious sun soaked Saturday afternoon, found the first pub, planted ourselves on barstools for a few pints before making our way back to the station, homeward bound. Despite our best intentions, his health began to deteriorate after that and he never felt able to repeat the journey.
He was frequently admitted to hospital. Each time he came out I would call in to see him until that time in June when he didn’t come out. The last contact I had with him was from the hospital when he told me he had shared A Morning Thought. Sean often said to me that religion was bunkum and loved nothing better when out and about to take the piss out of those easily offended at irreverence. What some regarded as sacred, Sean saw as superstition. When he was described at his funeral mass, which I attended, as a Christian man, this image of him wincing floated across my mind. My own view was that there was at least two atheists in church that day – myself and him.
He would frequently comment on The Pensive Quill as Boyne Rover and on occasion write a piece for it, once doing a Booker’s dozen.
Sean was always on hand, no matter what. He would run us to the airport or pick us up. He also drove us to the hospital the day Sile died. Anytime the electrics at home were having an off day, Sean was down like a shot to sort it. When he finished we would not let him go, as my wife and myself enticed him to share some of his stories with us. He was simply a great raconteur and a connoisseur of bawdy jokes, thousands of which he shared with me over the many years I knew him.
A truly larger than life character, the memories of Sean could fill a book, maybe a couple of them.
He relished winding people up about Sinn Fein, often expressing the view that he found it difficult to comprehend how people could hang onto every word of a gobshite, as he termed one party personality.
I was a frequent visitor to his home where we would sit and probably bore his wife Ann out of her tree with our waffle about soccer and politics. Yet he was a family man who cherished his wife, daughters and grandchildren. Before I met him he had lost a daughter, Kelly Ann, to illness. Anytime we discussed her passing the pain was etched on his face and the conversation heavy and sombre.
When we got our free travel passes he suggested we hit a few spots about the country. In the summer of 2023 we set out for Galway but the train was crowded so we ended up taking one to Portlaoise, only to change our minds before reaching that destination after I persuaded him it was probably the most drab town in Ireland. The only thing of note in it was the jail and we didn’t really want to go there. We jumped off at Kildare on a glorious sun soaked Saturday afternoon, found the first pub, planted ourselves on barstools for a few pints before making our way back to the station, homeward bound. Despite our best intentions, his health began to deteriorate after that and he never felt able to repeat the journey.
He was frequently admitted to hospital. Each time he came out I would call in to see him until that time in June when he didn’t come out. The last contact I had with him was from the hospital when he told me he had shared A Morning Thought. Sean often said to me that religion was bunkum and loved nothing better when out and about to take the piss out of those easily offended at irreverence. What some regarded as sacred, Sean saw as superstition. When he was described at his funeral mass, which I attended, as a Christian man, this image of him wincing floated across my mind. My own view was that there was at least two atheists in church that day – myself and him.
He would frequently comment on The Pensive Quill as Boyne Rover and on occasion write a piece for it, once doing a Booker’s dozen.
Sean was always on hand, no matter what. He would run us to the airport or pick us up. He also drove us to the hospital the day Sile died. Anytime the electrics at home were having an off day, Sean was down like a shot to sort it. When he finished we would not let him go, as my wife and myself enticed him to share some of his stories with us. He was simply a great raconteur and a connoisseur of bawdy jokes, thousands of which he shared with me over the many years I knew him.
A truly larger than life character, the memories of Sean could fill a book, maybe a couple of them.
 |
| ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre. |
No comments