Uncategorized – Page 2 – Closely Related to Chester

Back to Inst: Quaerere Verum

I travelled back to Belfast last month to attend a school reunion at Inst. It was fifty years since I left the school, and I had never before been minded to attend such an event.

A few hundred old boys turned up, in dinner jackets and bow ties, with heads greyer or more bald towards the front tables of the Common Hall, where once ‘eager and joyous in youth’ we donned uniform black and yellow RBAI blazers and school ties.

As Michael Longley pointed out in a video a few years ago, Inst was founded by William Drennan, also founding member of the Society of United Irishmen, and coiner of the phrase ‘The Emerald Isle’, as a place of education for all, with no religious connotations. Indeed until the Education Act of 1947 there were no prayers at Assembly.

That had changed by my time, and when we attended Morning Assembly in 1966 we had to remember to bring red hymn books with us.

In our first years at Inst there was revolution in the air, at least among the bigger boys. I don’t recall that it was about the impending sectarian conflict in our city. It was more triggered by civil rights marches in the US, and student protest in Paris. Having discovered the similarity between our hymn books and Chairman Mao’s little red book, we waved our books in the air, like so many followers of the revolution. Some books were even thrown and trampled on the ground and burned near the tuck shop.

For this irresponsible and irreligious act a few radical pupils were punished. A gust of protest arose. Word went round that we would not sing the hymn the next day at Assembly. But the Principal somehow got wind of our proposed hymn boycott. At 9 a.m. we all stood to attention, as we were expected to, when Mr Peskett entered the Common Hall. But when he arrived on the stage, and took off his mortar board, instead of announcing the morning’s hymn he curtly told us all to ‘please sit’. He announced no hymn. Radical protestant movement in the centre of Belfast had once more been nipped in the bud.

Last month no hymns were sung at our Old Boys dinner, but a prayer was said, and we drank a loyal toast to the King. And, with the words printed on sheets to remind us, we all sang the school song in unison and with gusto.

The words of Inst ! Inst ! Ancient and Royal are stirring, but the music is borrowed from an old German drinking song, of the oompah oompah variety, and it was hard to tell if the old boys were taking the words seriously enough. A finer Inst school song was written in the 1930s by some of our uncles, but it did not catch on, and they may have taken it with them to their graves.

Ten old boys from my year turned up. That’s about 10% of the final year pupils. Half had stayed in Northern Ireland and half had left. Belfast wasn’t such a great place to hang around in in ‘73. It’s much improved today.

Some of us recalled our first English teacher, an Irish hockey international from Cork, who introduced us to Yeats, and got himself into deep water by an impressive but inaccurate throw of a duster across the classroom. It had been the boy behind who was talking, not the innocent chap who still bears the scar on his head.

Michael Longley, our second year English teacher one day brought a pal to his classroom to read his new poetry to us – poems with titles such as ‘Digging’ ‘Blackberrying’ and ‘Follower’ which were later to earn their author ~ Seamus Heaney ~ the Nobel Prize. We recalled how Longley once played a piece of classical music on his record player and asked us to write down the thoughts that came into our heads as we listened. We learnt afterwards that the piece was Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Apparently one cultured fellow knew the title of the work.

I was delighted when the President of the Old Boys Association remembered our 1973 Ulster Schools Cup Rugby Final, even though we lost to Ballyclare, and when one old boy remembered playing rugby with my late brother John. There was a moment’s silence for absent friends.

What had happened to us all in the fifty years since we left Inst ? Some joined the family firm, and a pair of good mathematicians entered the insurance profession. A talented scrum-half became an architect; a fine artist chose to teach English ; a clever fellow turned into an Oxford don; and one boy – perhaps our highest flyer – became a pilot in the Canadian Air Force.

It was he who asked me how I became a diplomat, but, just as I was about to answer we were asked to stand to sing that old school song, and we did as we were told.

After that there were good speeches, and plenty of red wine, and I never did get round to explaining how a son of the Manse and old Instonian, brought up in such a British tradition, later became an Irish and European diplomat.

If you are interested to know more you may read my story, and that of my family, and how we responded to the Troubles, in ‘The Corncrake’s Welcome’ , just published by Troubador, available in paperback and soon in e book. https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/autobiography/the-corncrakes-welcome

P.S. I apologize for any inaccuracies that may have occurred in this post. The school’s motto is Quaerere Verum – Seek the Truth, and my memories may not all be accurate or reliable. I welcome observations or corrections.

What-you-may-call-it

Yesterday I finished writing my second book. It’s a sequel to Voyages with my Grandfather. It starts with my parents’ stories and moves on to how I grew up in Belfast in the 1960s. It also takes me to Scotland, Donegal, France, Dublin, and Belgium.

I’m still looking for a title. The working title has always been, like this blog, Closely related to Chester. I have reworked some of the pieces published here over the last two years, including my tribute to old Chester, the little known 21st President of the United States. But perhaps this title is too obscure, or too presumptuous.

Reflections on the Union Canal

Morning run by the Union Canal in Edinburgh

A few days ago I rose early to Ieave my car at a garage a couple of miles away beside the Union Canal. It was a beautiful blue-skied morning, such as Edinburgh occasionally bestows on its inhabitants, and I decided to run back home along the canal. The sun was shining brightly and the trees were just beginning to put on their new leaves. As I came to the stretch of the canal near the church at Polwarth I stopped and took a photo of the scene.

When I examined the photo later I was disappointed that the church tower was partly hidden by the leaves. Nevertheless I put the photo on Facebook where many people liked it. Looking more closely I could see that the tower is in fact fully visible in the reflection. You can see this even better if you turn the photo upside down.

My father might have crafted a sermon or a children’s address out of such a photograph. Perhaps his text would have been “for now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I will know fully.”

A few days later, as I crossed the bridge over the canal, on my way to see a rugby match at Murrayfield, another beautiful sight greeted me.

There are also swans with their cygnets at the nearby Craiglockhart nature reserve. Each year the entire neighbourhood takes an interest in the birds’ nest and bets are placed on when the eggs will hatch. Ornithologists line up with their huge cameras to capture the moment of birth.

Yesterday afternoon I walked along the Union Canal, westwards this time to where it joins the Water of Leith, which winds its way down from the Pentland Hills.

I followed the river up to the village of Colinton. This is territory Robert Louis Stevenson frequented as a boy. Stevenson, author of ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Kidnapped’ was one of my grandparents’ favourite authors and I brought their copy of his book ‘Edinburgh’ with me when I first came to the University, many years ago. I remember reading it out loud to my future wife on the January night when we met.

Robert Louis Stevenson is celebrated in the mural at Colinton

Today my son and his wife and daughters live in Colinton. Look who is coming along to meet Grandpa.

Closely related in April

I was born on the first of April. So I am an April Fool. Some of my fellow April fools may be ashamed of the day they were born, but it has always made me feel special. Every year on my birthday I am privileged to be on the receiving end of good wishes, birthday presents and practical jokes. Family and friends are in good form, and even people who don’t know me well and may forget other birthdays nevertheless remember mine.

When I was a child my mother used to come into my bedroom early on the morning of 1st April, pull back the curtains, and say “Oh look, is that snow on the ground? ” Snow on my birthday, hurrah, I must check this through the window: “April Fool !”

Dr Fay’s plays

Cushendun, where we studied Antigone in 1970

Dr Fay assigned me to the chorus of one of his plays — Antigone — and so I can only make a minor contribution to their history in comparison with those, including the distinguished Irish cleric Rev John Faris, who played the main characters.

I became a classics scholar more by default than design. First form at Inst meant studying foreign languages — French and Latin — for the first time. Our new French teacher was perhaps a better coach of the 1st XV than of 11- year-olds struggling with avoir and être.

However our Latin teacher, Rev. McConnell Auld, was a decent chap, who tolerated our repeated mistakes without pulling our hair. He didn’t seem to notice that we decorated the covers of our New Latin Course textbooks, so that they became so many ‘Newts Eating Courses. The Auld sipped his chocolate, munched his biscuits and exhorted us to soldier on with porto, portas, portat as ‘the girl sits under the tree’ (puella sub
arbore sedet) and as ‘the sailors launch their boats into the sea’,
(nautae scaphas etc). It was because of the more sympathetic teaching of a dead language than a living one that I chose to study Greek in 3rd form, rather than German like most of my friends.

Rothwell was another good chap, though quite eccentric. He seemed to be obsessed with pigs. I wonder if anyone remembers his brilliant Scottish Presbyterian minister’s sermon which included the phrase ‘Where the Wild Haggises Roam’. He was a distinguished classicist who instilled in us a love of the languages. With only five boys in my Greek class, my turn to answer the questions came round so often that learning inevitably took place. Rothers also introduced us to the classical theatre, taking us down to Dublin to see Medea performed at Trinity, and entertaining us to lunch in The Buttery.

So by the time we entered Charlie Fay’s class, we knew classics quite well, and were inoculated to some extent against his infamous wrath. We steered our way through his lessons more or less unscathed, and without being brought to ‘our knees’ too often. Dr Fay may have seemed a monster to pupils who struggled with classics, but he was kind to those who showed any enthusiasm for the subject. We were few and he needed every one of us to take part in his plays.

In my youth I suffered from stage fright. My first and only starring role at school, at the age of seven, was as one of the Pleiades. Fortunately Miss Strahan, the choreographer of this piece of stellar entertainment
for Inchmarlo parents, gave me no words to recite.

A couple of years later my one and only solo performance in the Windsor Church choir also turned out to be a silent one. I had learnt by heart the words of the second verse of The Holly and the Ivy (The Holly bears a berry as red as any blood) but when Alec Mc Neilly gave me my cue to perform in front of the congregation no words came out of my mouth, in spite the organ master’s smiling face, pleading with me to perform.

For a few years after that I succeeded in avoiding any solo stage appearances. When I learnt that my good run had come to an end, and there was no way to avoid conscription into one of Dr Fay’s plays, I was relieved to hide behind a mask, deep in the ranks of the chorus.

The choruses of Antigone were set to music by Geoffrey Trory, or Mr Trog as my Aunt Emily once addressed him, confidently, at a parents’ meeting. I can still remember the rising melody that Trory composed for the first chorus of Antigone:

‘Wonders are many on earth, and the greatest of these
Is Man, who rides the ocean and takes his way
Through the deeps, through wind-swept valleys of perilous seas

That surge and sway.’

Behind my mask I was at last able to perform in public. And I also sang in tune, which is more than can be said for some others, including Fay himself, who belted out the words from the wings when he thought the chorus was not getting its message across to the audience loudly enough.

Looking back today I admire the actors who played the leading roles In Antigone, learning swathes of Greek and English text, while all I had to memorize were a few chorus lines. As John Faris recalls, I also had sympathy for the parents who were condemned to sit through the play twice — first in Greek and then in English. Perhaps some of them sat in the Common Hall on a cold winter’s night, reflecting on ancient lessons about the laws of men and the laws of God. I suspect most were counting the minutes until the final curtain fell and they could drive their offspring safely home, through Belfast’s troubled City Centre streets, back to leafy Malone Road suburbs.

Recently I took my grandchildren to Cushendun and pointed out to them the house where, in 1970, we were summonsed by Charlie Fay to stay for a week with him and his wife and daughter, and study Antigone. That Easter I had been at my uncle’s farm in Loughgiel and had cycled over the mountains, past Slieve na Orra, where in 1583 Sorley Boy MacDonnell won a decisive victory against the MacQuillans, and down through beautiful Glendun to the village. It amazes me today that we were taught next to no Irish history at Inst, and certainly nothing about Sorley Boy MacDonnell, whereas we spent long hours translating Caeser’s Gallic wars and learning of battles between Athenians and Spartans.

At Cushendun Fay gave each of us household tasks. Mine was to sweep the kitchen floor each morning, since then a duty I have always taken seriously. We studied Greek all morning, translating the entire play, and were free after lunch. One afternoon one of the main actors in the play (was he Ismene?) was displaying his skills as a fly fisherman, casting into the river Dun, when a wind arose and he hooked his own ear. He was whisked off to the Cottage Hospital in Cushendall to get the hook removed. Comedy and tragedy are but a breath apart.

Today there is a little statue near the spot. It’s just below the bridge, near where Game of Thrones busses deposit sword-wielding tourists, who march solemnly round to the caves to take selfies, or enact battle scenes from the blood-curdling series, before having coffee at McBride’s. In fact the statue is not in honour of a Game of Thrones hero, Sir Jaime or Eurion, nor of Dr Fay, nor even of our unfortunate fisherman, but of a much-loved local goat, the last animal to be culled in the foot and mouth epidemic. Epi demos — from the Greek — a plague upon the people. We ignore the laws of God at our peril.

Thanks to our talented Classics teachers I did well in Greek and Latin ‘O’ levels. My last memory of Dr Fay is passing him in the N block stairwell, seeing him stop and turn round, with a look of regret. saying, “You should be studying Classics at ‘A’ level”. I did not want to disappoint him, but by that time I had found a good French teacher, outside Inst, and my eyes were fixed on Edinburgh and an M.A. course in Contemporary European Institutions.

Over the years I have sometimes pondered on the tale of tragic destiny that Sophocles presents to us in Antigone. I’ve thought of those old men in the chorus, who we first played when we were adolescents, coming on stage to declare, “Woe is me — the Gods are unhappy — this is not going to turn out well.” I sometimes felt my role as EU Ambassador in different countries, attempting to find common language among 28 national positions, was like leading a Greek chorus. Perhaps now that one of the most out-of-tune Member States has left the stage, the sound will be more EUphonious… perhaps not. As the chorus reminds us towards the end of Antigone “The future is not to be known; our present care is with the present; the rest is in other hands.”

Marking the page

The packers arrive tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. As I look down from our flat to the avenue below I see that the police have already reserved a place for the removal van. This is the 17th flit of our married life.

This evening, as the sun streams through our window, at the end of a beautiful Spring Sunday, we are making our final choices of what to bring to Edinburgh and what to leave in Brussels.

In the beginning we were going to move everything of value. However last week we learned that, as a result of Brexit, we will have to pay VAT, Customs Duties and a customs charge on all the goods we take to the UK. So we have decided to leave our most expensive belongings in Belgium for the time being.

Among the books I found a copy of Kipling’s Jungle Books inscribed ‘Annie from R. October 3rd 1925’. Between pages 261 and 262 I found this picture, cut from a greetings card. On the back it says – ‘black headed shrike on bougainvillea. Drawing by the Rev B.C.R. Henry’

At the bottom corner you can see the year of the drawing is 1957. That is the year my Grandfather died. I have just read the first story entitled ‘Mowgli’s brothers’. We are introduced to Akela, Shere Khan, Baghera, Baloo – compelling stuff. I seem to recall that Gran read us these stories when we were young. Perhaps the marker shows that one of my grandparents was in the middle of reading the book when they died.

My grandsons Finn or Max are about the right age to appreciate these stories. I’ve just shown Finn the book on a phone call. As I thought he knows the film but doesn’t know the book. So this one is being added to the Edinburgh pile. I hope I’m not charged extra VAT because it is a first edition. I can’t wait to see my grandchildren again.

As a result of all our moves around the world we possess mountains of bits and pieces of things of little commercial value, but much sentimental value-added. Yet we have always found that the best moment in a move is when the packers have gone and the place is empty.

Eureka !

Yesterday I was clearing old photos and pictures, trying to decide what to take to Edinburgh and what to leave in Brussels. I found a Hanna family crest, and thought it would look well above the mantelpiece in my new house. However the frame was fairly battered, so I looked for another one to cannibalise. I found a suitably-sized framed photo of three grandsons at my daughter’s wedding. However much I love them all, it is not one of the most flattering images – one boy is crying, another looks bored, and the third is about to throw something at the camera. So I decided this particular moment in time could be conveniently forgotten, and the frame could instead reblazon the Hanna name. As I moved the boys out of the frame I had a sense of deja vu, and to my great joy, lying hidden underneath was a photo of my grandfather Robert Boyd.

Very Reverend R.H.Boyd, D.D. Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, 1947

I always intended to include this image of RHB in my book Voyages with my Grandfather, However when the time came for publication I searched high and low for the photo and could not find it. What finery ! Look at the lace, the degree hood, the tassels and even the buckle on the breeches – all the regalia of a Presbyterian moderator. RHB’s look is steadfast and confident. I’ll be packing this photo to show my grandchildren in Edinburgh. Boyd on one side of the mantelpiece, and Hanna on the other.

Arrivals and departures

On New Year’s day, Paola and I got up early to go for a walk. Neither of us enjoys staying up late to see in the New Year. So we did not mind this year’s restrictions on partying. Feeling suitably self-righteous we set off into Brussels by car at half past eight, travelling into the centre of the city almost by ourselves. With few other vehicles on the wide Avenue Louise, I found it difficult to respect the new speed limit of 30 kph, even though I fully approve of it. Along the Rue Royale it was just us and the 94 tram, each vehicle overtaking or undertaking the other along the cobbled chaussee, until we reached the Parc Royal where we stopped and let the tram glide past .

Of poets and places

My first blog about Oscar ended with a nod to (or a steal from) another school teacher, the poet Michael Longley, who taught us English. One of my favourite poems is “Detour” where he imagines his own funeral possession, winding its way through the Main Street of a small town in Ireland, stopping here and there to chat to neighbours, taking its time, going in and out of shops, with himself directing proceedings, procrastinating about where the funeral may go next. I love Longley’s gallows humour, his sense of place and possibility, and his refusal to be rushed underground.

Alhambra

“This is where you will probably spend most of your time” said Inma, showing us round our Airbnb. We had wound our way up to the top floor of the Arab-style house and Inma pulled open the French window leading to the balcony. In front of us, floodlit and deep orange , the Alhambra stretched on its rocky outcrop against the evening sky. High behind the collection of moorish palaces lay the white snow caps of the Sierra Nevada, and to the West the sunset was made up of the most vivid Spanish colours – yellows and reds and all the shades in between.