John McGagh
Monday, March 04, 2024
Subframe issue
Friday, January 19, 2024
Slipping in
Friday, September 09, 2022
‘A Jesus with a light’
I was horrified: ‘You weren’t meant to find that bag!’
Bernie was on her way downstairs with a carrier bag
containing many old paper wallets of family photos. The wallets covered trips
to Ireland, the Costa del Sol and Majorca.
‘Well, your girls want to see the pictures of you when you had hair. Don’t shoot the messenger.’
Maude curated the contents of the bag and a daughter peered
over each of her shoulders. Here, indeed, was the evidence that I once had a
big curly head of hair and skin tight stonewashed jeans and a face so innocent
and optimistic that it almost brought me to tears.
The bag also contained pictures of my father looking similarly innocent and optimistic circa 1955.
Aurora took pictures of the pictures on her phone and there
was much amusement around shots of me in a Fuengirola hotel room in my pants.
‘You know that old chess set of yours is in the cupboard on the stairs as well’, said Bernie.
I hadn’t realised that quite so much of my youth was in ‘the
cupboard on the stairs’. It was always the place where family history was haphazardly
archived. I remember finding an old suitcase of Dad’s in there. It was the kind
of cheap, almost cardboard, case that many ‘Paddys’ came to England with –
usually reinforced by some form of strap or belt. Dad’s case contained a cache
of letters from an old girlfriend and a paperback of ‘Juliette’ by the Marquis
de Sade. My guess was it was a novel with saucy bits – but I never got around
to checking.
Bernie joined me at the cupboard and rummaged for a while.
‘There’s the board – under that stuff.’
We moved the pile of ‘stuff’ and revealed what was quite an
ornate chess board with Tudor roses on the black squares. I remembered then
that the pieces were Tudor figures – with Henry VIII as king. Jocasta later
pointed out that having Henry VIII as black and white king was ‘surely a
continuity error.’
‘There’s a carrier bag in there with the chess pieces in. Mum
said, ‘to the right as you open the door’. My guess, then, is far left.’
Bernie laughed and started to offer me some of the Catholic
icons stored at the back of the cupboard. An image of Jesus with lambs at his
feet appeared.
‘Do you want a Jesus?’
She carried on rummaging and found the old family 'Sacred Heart' picture:
‘Do you want a Jesus with a light?’
The Sacred Heart used to hang in the living room when I was
a child. The light signified the presence of Jesus in the house – protecting us.
Indoctrinated as I was as a child, I would panic that Jesus had forsaken us and
that I was destined for Limbo when mum hadn’t fed the meter with coins and
Jesus and his bright red heart were dimmed.
Aurora’s bedroom is a well thought out teenage grotto of
film posters and icons from pop culture and Manga comics.
‘I’ll have a Jesus with a light. It’ll look great my room.’
‘You will not,’ said Bernie. ‘It’s a proper religious thing
for, you know, devotion. Anyway, your dad said it might be worth a few quid one
day.’
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
'pray and be patience'
For the last few weeks, I have been viewing the Irish passport service website daily. I have my passport, but the rest of the family have been waiting for theirs since the beginning of March.
The webchat panel is nearly always greyed out - they're too busy to help me. If you hang on there and refresh the page upwards of a hundred times, it goes green for a second. You have to be quick and paste your details in before it greys out again and they are, once again, too busy to help me. This has turned into a challenge, a daily game and a way for me to break up the monotony of working from home.
When you do get through to have an actual webchat, the responses can be pretty brusque. I tell myself that they are, after all, very busy disappointing as many people as possible every day and I can't reasonably expect politeness. They are probably working to targets which ensure that they disappoint as many people as they possibly can before they log off. I was, given this context, very surprised with the advice I received from the webchat agent 'helping' me yesterday. As you can see from the transcript below, he thought it appropriate when I asked if he thought the passports would be processed in time for our travel date, to suggest that I pray for them.
Can I suggest to anybody associated with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs that some virtual rosary beads be incorporated into the passport website for this purpose. Perhaps an icon or two could be added also - there are some expanses of blank screen you could play with. A solemn decade or two would pass the time nicely while a passport applicant waits for the short window of opportunity when the webchat panel turns green.
2022-07-11 12:45:59 | John Patrick McGagh: Thank you. Does that mean they will be processed in time?
2022-07-11 12:47:45 | Agent: hopefully this time of the year you can pray and be patience. once the checks are done it will speed up.
2022-07-11 12:48:01 | Agent: As you may appreciate, we have unprecedented high volumes of first\-time applications
2022-07-11 12:48:17 | John Patrick McGagh: OK, thanks for your help
2022-07-11 12:48:33 | Agent: we are trying our best to process them quickly
2022-07-11 12:48:40 | Agent: Thank you for contacting the Passport Service, have a lovely day
2022-07-11 12:48:58 | System: The agent has ended this chat.
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
‘And the strange dust lands on your hands and on your face‘
My daughters have developed an interest in funeral customs.
‘Is the open coffin thing an Irish tradition Dad. Do you want one?’
‘I think they do it in lots of cultures’, I guessed, ‘but I’ve seen a few in my time.’
‘Didn’t your mum once take you to someone’s house when they were dead?’
‘Indeed she did, yes. She said we were going to Tess’s house to pay our respects. She didn’t warn me that Tess was lying in her coffin in the front room and no, I don’t want one’.
‘Were you frightened Dad?’
‘No, but it was one of the more memorable house calls I made with my mother.’
‘What about the circus cannon? Do you still want to have your ashes fired from a circus cannon Dad?’
‘I’ve been considering that wish and I think I am going to give you girls 3 options to mark my passing:
Indeed, the circus cannon. I think the firing of my ashes mixed with glitter from a very loud circus cannon at a moment of peak excitement in the circus programme would be just splendid. I’d like to think that ‘I’ would shower down on to happy smiling faces and if there was enough glitter involved they would never suspect that the strange dust was six parts old guy cremains. My atomised self would then be carried on clothing and shoes into the living rooms of elated Blaydon families returning home full of tales of the circus. I would happily mingle with their house dust and dog hairs and end up (still glittering a little) in their Dysons.
I would also not be the least bit averse to having my ashes flung with absolutely no ceremony or a second thought from the bridge at the foot of the hill in Cloonaghgarve, County Galway. As previously mentioned this bridge was blown up twice by my great grandfather in his campaign of sabotage against the British colonialists. My great-grandfather died an old man of natural causes, by the way.
Egg timer. This is a new one, but would repurpose my ashes and put them to good household use. Put my ashes in a plain, but tasteful, egg-timer to sit on a kitchen shelf. The new 'me' would be wipe clean, very useful and wouldn’t look out of place on Instagram.’
‘Wouldn’t it need to be really big, Dad, to take all of your ashes?’
‘Not necessarily. You could just use the finer ashes for the egg-timer and design it so that it timed a pizza in the crazy hot bottom oven. About 8 minutes I reckon. The coarser cremains could be added to some brightly coloured maracas and these could be shaken while you/your friends/your children/their children (eventually) have a sing-song while they wait for the pizzas.’
Monday, December 30, 2019
Hard paper round
‘How old do you think I am?’
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Charity Case
Friday, May 06, 2016
'I can remember when all this was sex shops....'
I did know. My old classmate was busy organising a reunion and thought she'd prepare me for the shock if I were to come back for the event. I felt sad that I wouldn't be able to glance at the school as I passed it on my way home. My old landmarks steadily disappear. Manchester refuses to maintain the landscape I scampered around in a range of outfits from short trousers, through dishevelled school uniform, to secondhand clothes from Affleck's Palace.
An old friend recently joined me in lamenting these changes and, in particular, the gentrification of the seedy Tibb Street area. It is now all fancy artisan cheese makers and aparthotels.
'I can remember when all this was sex shops,' she said with a nostalgic glint in her eye.
On one scamper through Moss Side, I watched as a friend was knocked down by a car. Reports said that Johnny was 'run over', but he wasn't. He was 'knocked down'.
It was a Hillman Hunter, the car. We had just come through a Moss Side alley beside a shop once owned by Anthony Burgess’s family. Johnny and I were eager to cross the road and get back to ‘The Big Alec’ for a game of pool and some stolen crisps.
I was reporting in a flat tone, like it was just one of those everyday happenings in the ‘hood’.
Quite an old guy, at least thirty. But he couldn’t half move….
and, yeah, I’m sure he threw something while he was running....
Think it might have been a gun….’
At this point, I got up and walked away with my best approximation of an inner city swagger.
Johnny came back to school on crutches with the biggest plaster-cast any of us had ever seen. I rehearsed him on my enhanced version of the story and we were the talk of the yard - for about a week.
Everybody signed his cast - even some of the teachers. Some of our teachers were nuns. I don't think any of the nuns signed the cast. That was a shame. That would have created a photo opportunity worthy of a quirky 'Get Well Soon' card.
I think Johnny got a taste for the attention. I remember he suffered at least two more broken limbs while at school - one of which was an arm broken in the still spinning drum of a spin drier. I still don't quite understand how he achieved that, but the girls didn't ask too many questions - they just queued up to sign his cast.