The Crime and Punishment of the ‘Sons of Ulster’ March 25, 2008

This began life as a 365 blog but I realised that I wanted it to reach a broader audience (or perhaps just one more likely to comment): I’ve also been wanting to resurrect the pondering of Carrie for a while and hope that perhaps this will lead on to something bigger and better. I also thought I should wait until all four episodes of the ‘Sons of Ulster’ programme I’m writing about had aired; but social plans will interrupt my TV viewing for the remainder of the week (I am making a mental list of my ‘Sky-Plus’ friends or even just those I know who can work a video). So will too ponderous an intro…

I’ve just finished watching a BBC Northern Ireland programme: ‘Sons of Ulster’. It had been commissioned a while ago but bureaucratic red-tape got in the way. Over the next few nights it is telling the story of a group of young offenders incarcerated in Hydebank Wood Young Offenders’ Centre, being taken under the tutelage of local actor/ director Dan Gordon to present Frank McGuinnesses’ play Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, to an audience of their prison peers.

I’m a huge fan of the play; having seen a relatively recent production at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre I have ‘directed’ ( in the Drama teacher sense of the word); two A-level Exam performances of the same play. Each time I presented the story using a group of eight girls. It’s a man’s play; dealing with the complex relationships of Northern Irish World War One soldiers. A play that any synopsis here would do little justice too. It is an obvious choice for the project Dan Gordon is undertaking: it deals not only with male relationships but also political and religious identity,  sexual orientation and the inner-struggle each man’s encounters in  finding his sense of self and feelings of self-worth as he faces the fear of  ’going over the top.’ (So much for avoiding the synopsis…)

I was struck tonight by the humanity of the boys taking part; and how similar they are to the boys in my own classroom. Dan Gordon refuses to deal with the details of their criminal past; wanting instead to offer them a different perspective than whatever one had led them to this frightening and freedom-less place and time. My aunt used to teach in Hydebank and even now is still connected to Prisoners’ Education and I continually ask her how she copes with the idea that the men in her classroom are murderers, rapists, thugs of the highest order and her simple answer is always the same. She doesn’t: she sees them as students; men her education can help in the slow process of re-entering society.

It is easy, to only see the positive here. As a Drama teacher it is easy to applaud the inter and intra-personal skills these boys will gain from their literary and theatrical experience; to write at length of how the exposure to literary culture that is both alien but entirely relevant to their own experiences could be postive in ways beyond measure. 

But all crimes have victims and somewhere in the immediate locality are the victims of the crimes (some of them fatal, many of them violent) these boys committed. How do they, and their families’ feel watching these boys being presented with this particular opportunity?

Tonight’s programme posed the difficult question: should prison be punishment or rehabilitation? These are young offenders; boys who are typically victims of social deprivation (and the Northern Ireland paramilitarism that so often accompanied it), boys who the mainstream education system  and society as a whole has in some way failed, boys who have made horrifically bad choices; but Dan Gordon certainly believes they are boys who deserve a second chance.

I await tomorrow night’s episode…

Auld Lyne SIGH December 8, 2007

So it happened by text today: the inevitable question: What are you doing for New Year’s Eve? I ignored the question…the friend in question text back telling me that: ignoring it doesn’t make it go away …and to get back to her when I got over myself.

I hate New Year’s Eve with a passion and with plenty of merit for doing so. It is the night you must spend a fortune to go somewhere you’d usually avoid; you must spend a  similar fortune on an outfit befitting the pressure of the occasion and as a single girl you, must, must, must find someone, anyone to kiss at the stroke of midnight otherwise you are destined for yet another romantically barren year.

Who ever decided that just a week after you’ve stuffed yourself silly on mulled wine and tins of Quality Street is the best time to go a-hunting? And despite the huge array of perfumed body products; potions and lotions we all got from well-meaning friends and relatives there are really only two scents on display: the scent of smugness (from those people already coupled-up) and that of sheer desperation.

My tales of New Years past read as the following horror story:

I admit they used to be nights of conquest: as an underage drinker this was the night you were “allowed” to snog as many boys as possible without being thought of as ’slutty’; the problem was, at 15 your social circle is ever so small and you had to face the people you (and let’s be frank every other girl in the place) had exchanged cider-fuelled saliva with, on that excruiating first day back at school.

There was  also the night, I was perhaps 17 when me and my drinking buddy Lisa, after six too many Goldschlagger fell over in the mud, in our formal dresses just as my Mum pulled up to take us home.

Unfortunately age and university failed to bring wisdom. I had bought a French Connection dress in the sales and decided to give it a virgin visit, that night, ‘New Year’s Eve at the Manhattan’ (this is not another- I love NYC moment but instead a ‘club’ in Belfast that defies explanation unless you’ve been there): first one strap of my dress broke and then the other; spending the stroke of midnight trying to cover your assets is not the happiest of hogmanies.

And even in more recent times; having missed the moment of midnight as I was dancing manically to Mr Brightside (having got bored of counting all the Bratz dolls lookalikes in this particular Belfast night spot) I decided to go to the bar to get a round of shots to recreate the moment (this is another New Year issue; its not acceptable to drink civilised wine over conversation, instead we have to drink cocktails and tequilia and other liver rupturing substances: its all about greasing the social skills and clouding the beer goggles enough to make capturing your kiss in anyway enjoyable); the bar was of course crowded  to the point of potential riot(another new year’s eve ritual), I somehow managed to escape the cascade of Guinness the guy beside me tried to drown me with. I struck up conversation with the seemingly cute blonde guy on my otherside (he may have been neither cute nor even blonde); Tony- my long suffering friend came to find me (and his drink) only to find me exchanging salvia with Mr Blonde: he gathered the group of ‘friends’ I’d come with and they applauded as my little floor show continued…

I tried last year to avoid it all, by going to a party at my friends’ house. No pressure, a little wine, a lot of champagne and absolutely no pressure, there would be no single men there that I would either have to endure being coupled up with, or snog relentlessly/ throw myself at, then have to avoid at breakfast. In my stupidity I hadn’t realised that this also meant that every other party guest were a couple. This meant at the moment of midnight I lwas left  holding the champagne glass and singing Auld Lyne Sang by myself.

So what’s a girl to do? How do I avoid the disasters of yesteryear and not have a new year’s eve I spend the rest of ‘08 trying to rectify? Staying in, in my pjs with a dvd looks more and more tempting…

The Resuscitaiton of the Boy Band: Take That- Back for Good. October 13, 2007

I sit, I type, I await the ridicule (Bring it on Vox O’Malley- bring it on! Lily/ Gold Dust- I remember your dancing delight at Westlife- so bang goes your credibility)… I will however strive to avoid the gushy, overly enthusiastic: often accompanied by shrieking hyperbolic drivel, that fellow concert goers have endured since my recent encounters, with four men from my distant past .

I describe my musical tastes as ecletic (Pop Princess just doesn’t work past the age of 25). I love to do the concert thing: the soul-altering U2 at Slane Castle, OXEGEN ‘05, Robbie at Croke, The Killers, Snow Patrol and even as far as Hyde Park, to the once-in-this-lifetime LIVE 8. I also feel, since we’re in the general business of soul unburdening that I should confess that I’ve been to see Westlife close to ten times, I also saw Boyzone and try to catch Ronan Keating each time he comes to Belfast. Judge if you must…

but know this…if you haven’t been to Take That concert, your judgement(of this particular pop product) is absolutely without substance- its NEVER just about the music. Their shows are truly a theatrical spectacle that could out Broadway Broadway. This ‘Beautiful World’ tour somehow managed to surpass all that had gone before (and not just because ‘At the age of 39 Howard can still do a ‘back-flip,’ Jason can still break dance and Mark Owen still break a thousand hearts; in fact all the ‘boys’ look better than they ever did: oozing sex-appeal at the same power of their dazzling lights) this one boasted a string quartet, a grand piano, a historical tour of mankind, African influences and the best pop music you’ve heard in a deacde. And to those music purists who believe that ‘the music should speak for itself, the light show, the gravity defying dancers, the mesmirising special FX are window dressing’; quite simply don’t know what they’re missing.

These boys (as they each are approaching 40- boys seems euphemistic: but in my mind boys they remain) are incredibly and charismatic, they somehow manage in an arena full to the rafters, to make you feel like the only girl in the room. The thousands disappear. Its just me and the boys. I’ve become the inspiration and the single recipient of one of their million love songs.

There is something almost spiritual about the live music ‘arena’ experience. . There is something about the collectively shared anticipation; the buying of the programme, the polite clapping at the often less than wonderful support act. Then its here. The moment. The lights go out, a feeling of sheer thrill spreads across stadium and through ever fibre of your being- the overwhelming stage lights blind you, the music begins changing the very rhythm of your heart. And in this instance: somewhere in your mind, tucked behind the forgotten school girl crushes, the bad 90s fashion choices, your first ever open-mouthed kiss; is every lyric to every song and the WHOLE crowd are singing along.

Take That were and are about more than making great pop music: they were a vital voice of my generation. I first encountered Mark, Robbie (gone but not forgotten; but never to return: we all realise – and probably did back in’93- that the ’star of those shows’: that gorgeous boy from Stoke, had an ego so damaged by instantaneous, that NO band was the place for it to heal- I love him still), Gary, Jason and Howard when I first encountered boys in general: these five Mancunian lads were part of my (and my generation’s) sexual awakening. But unlike their ‘real-life’ school boy counterparts: none of the fabulous five were ever going to hold me to public ridicule, break my heart or give my parent’s ‘potential teenage pregnancy’ nightmares.

They are an indeliable part of my early teenage years: part of thpse first faltering steps towards independence. I was just discovering that weekends weren’t just about no-school and Saturday morning cartoons; but instead about shopping trips for the top you would wear with your must have 501’s, in preparation for even the smallest possibilities of a slow- dance (something of a discovery itself) at the local “Under 18’s” disco that night. The boy of your dreams was just one song away; you would be married with three children by the time you were 25 and have made your first million by the age of 30.

Hold on just a rose-tinted minute: why oh why would anyone want to recapture their early teens? Puberty is so terribly unkind to us all: you’re either a lingerie wearing trail blazer or THE LAST GIRL ON THE PLANET to need to wear a bra. You’re a total prisoner to the molotov cocktail of hormones carousing around your rapidly changing body and no-one seems to understand just what you’re going through.

And how can anyone be nostalgic for the early nineties? Operation Desert Storm was just beginning, LA was in flames of racial hatred after the Rodney King verdict and the humanitarian horrors of the Rwandan genocide was about to be ignored by the world.

My nostalgia however, is for a personally much simpler time: when all five of us sat around the family dinner table on a daily basis; my older sister yet to start the family tradition of ‘taking off’ to University, my Daddy still with us. I didn’t worry in the least about what to make for dinner, how to pay my car insurance, or my mortgage; and contraception was merely a source of giggling. The ‘only ‘ terrorism we faced was our horrifying homegrown variety, Manhattan still buzzed beneath the Twin Towers, London commuters only Tube fear was ‘were they running on time?’, the Iron Curtain had crumbled and Nelson Mandela had been granted ‘Freedom at Last’. We by no means lived in a perfect world but somehow, to me at least, it seemed a less frightening place to be.

The Backstreet Boys (did they ever go away?), the Spice Girls, 911(who?) and East 17 are jumping upon the’Let’s get the band back together again’ band wagon. My unqualified prediction? It won’t work: they don’t have the ingredients that make Take That, Take That. They are missing: the talent; the charisma and the new-found mutually respecting musical harmony of the boys who so graced the Odyssey stage in Belfast for the last five nights. Take That are unashamedly both proud and deprecating about their teenage-angst driven past: their audience has matured as they did: we collectively bring our life experience to the music: they in the creating of it and we in the appreciation. And in doing so reach they a whole new generation who are just discovering a beautiful world.