Another Story - First Days at the Tech

When I started at the Tech in the early 80s, my very first memo from our formidable Head of Department, Margaret Baumann, read, ‘I don’t think the Board will agree to supply us with 47,241 long-arm staplers – will one do?’  Mortified.  My first requisition form filled in wrong.  But lesson learned – I never got the catalogue number and the amount mixed up ever again.

After 4 years’ teaching English at Faughan Valley, I was cock-a-hoop to have landed a post at North West College.  Lecturing sounded so much more prestigious than teaching and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven as, even though I had night-classes, I also had blocks of free time during the day.  To be fair, the evening sessions were a joy as the students there were older and well-motivated.  The time flew with such groups and most nights some of us would fetch up at Andy Cole’s afterwards to continue the session, or not as the mood took us.  At the other end of the job-satisfaction spectrum were the daytime teenage brickies and plumbers, painters and decorators, who considered it nothing short of hell to be subjected to a weekly session of Communications & Life Skills.  Double hell when this was the last session of the day, as it usually was.  Because the English Department ‘serviced’ Construction with this course, we were at that department’s mercy when it came to time-tabling and they gave us the graveyard shift when they could.  Often.  Bad enough to have fading youths straining at the leash to get home; worse when they couldn’t see the point of this stupid lesson anyway.

Letters to employers, application forms, CVs, interview role plays, grammar, spelling, punctuation – what a load of drivel.  They knew – and we did too – that in those days most of them would drift effortlessly into working alongside brothers or fathers or uncles, or would be recommended for a job by Jimmy down the road.  But we had to persevere and by God it was an uphill struggle.  It was also a point of pride that you tried not to complain to their core lecturers about bad behavior, cursing, deliberately shoddy work, inane excuses for not being able to do something or the odd muttered threat. ‘Me Da’s in the RA and he’ll soon sort you out,’ was hurled over the shoulder by one guy whom I vainly tried to keep behind for defacing a desk.

One evening, frazzled after one of these sessions and in belligerent mood, I found myself driving through the Bogside. (I always hit the central-locking when I did this, more to pacify my husband than out of any concern for myself.)  I pulled up at a red light, lit a cigarette and rolled the window down a little.  Next thing, these two drinks of water wearing balaclavas and wielding guns are in front of me, motioning me to get out of the car.  I’m still in classroom mode and, as they move to either side, I yell, ‘Get home to your mammies!’  (There may have been a swear word in there.) I put my foot to the floor and drove off, leaving them open-mouthed with arms the same length.  It didn’t take long for the enormity of what I’ve done to sink in.  I just remember my right leg beginning to jump like mad as the car kangarooed it home. ‘ Give them the car, give them the money, give them your bag’ – all drummed into me from an early age and all for nought.

I often wonder how many outside the teaching profession are aware of how poorly qualified some of us can be for some of the subjects we end up spouting on.  Not as a general rule, you understand, but in times of emergency and the lack of anyone suitable to step up to the blackboard.  (Not allowed to say that anymore.  Mea culpa.)  With mediocre ‘O’ levels in Irish, French and Geography, plus a fail in RE at Dip Ed level, I found myself teaching all of those subjects at various times in various schools.  I’m not just talking about covering the odd class for someone off sick.  I’m referring to maternity leaves or periods of secondment or even sudden death.  Months could go by with someone like me keeping a page ahead of the class.

But the Tech presented the greatest challenge and what turned out to be the most fulfilling experience.  After an urgent - and terrifying - summons to the principal’s office, Peter Gallagher went round the houses about team-work and all hands to the pump and how we all have hidden resources, before telling me that a night-class which was fully subscribed and due to begin the following evening was missing a lecturer.  Can’t remember why.  However, the upshot was that he was depending on me stepping into the breach and sure it would be no bother to a person of my calibre.  And that’s how this woman, who just about knew how to build a fire, ended up teaching architecture.  But that’s another story……………………………………..

That's Another Story

Fun and frivolity.  We had buckets of both in Derry.  Just as those caught up in WW2 report grabbing life by the throat and wringing what joy they could from that awful time, so too did we, as we lived our way round and through The Troubles.  Was this fecklessness or simply survival of the spirit?  I think the latter, as many of us were doing our own small bits in our own little spheres to promote tolerance, understanding and communication.

Fancy dress events were thick on the ground and the costumes we assumed allowed us to step outside of ourselves for an evening.  Two of these occasions stand out in my mind – one ridiculous and one poignant.

The first was a debating society one in Redcastle.  A group of us had hired out a minibus and a room to change in.  I’d sprayed my hair blonde and borrowed a vintage evening dress in the vain hope that I’d pass for Marilyn Monroe or Lana Turner.  I knew the zip was broken and had armed myself with needle and thread.  Anita sewed me into the dress beforehand and I proceeded to dispel any illusion of elegance by getting stuck into my halves of Bulmers and my fags.  A good time was had by all and we swayed back to the room to change into our civvies for the journey home.  Now to get out of the dress.  Did anyone have scissors?  No-one had scissors.  Too tiddly to figure that hotel reception could probably come up with the goods, the gallant Trevor Robinson proceeded to bite me out of my gown.  Anita loved to tell that story.

The second memorable event was just before Christmas one year in the Guildhall and features the wonderful Paddy Rice, who fetched up as a local yokel.  He had on the most voluminous mid-calf white shirty thing tied at the waist with rope.  Add a flat cap, a blackthorn stick and hob-nailed boots and he really looked the part.  When I asked where he’d got his smock, he told me it was a shroud.  His father had been an undertaker I seem to remember.

A few days later, we had a New Year’s Eve party.  Paddy and Doreen had been invited but didn’t show.  They were sadly missed, not least because it was one of those knees-ups where everyone brought a dish and we were a dessert short.  We were joking about the fact that it was the ‘Rice pudding’.  Imagine my guilt, and our horror and sadness, when the phone rang to tell us that Paddy had just died in a car accident.  And then, not long after, my photos of the fancy dress plopped through the letterbox.  The hairs stood up on the back of my neck when I saw that the only print which was over-exposed was the one of Paddy and Doreen.  When I hear traditional Irish music, I often think of Paddy, as well as that other well-loved BBC presenter, Tony McAuley.

Many of the people who attended that party are now dead.  Anita and Trevor, Áine Downey, Ollie McGilloway, Liz Erskine, Gerry Anderson, Cecilia Kennedy, Peter Mullan, Dáithí Murphy – all good people who made the world a better place when they were in it.  They live on in the hearts of those of us remaining.  We creak on and continue to seize happiness where we can – with our arthritic fingers and halting gait – but always, always buoyed up by wonderfully fond memories.

Like the time two young lads tried to hijack my car in the Bogside and I told them to get home to their mammies.  But that’s another story……………………..

Another Thing

It’s no exaggeration to say that being involved with Radio Foyle had a profound effect on the rest of my career.  As a direct result of working/playing there, some doors opened immediately and others further down the line.  One early joy was being asked to write for ‘Radio Times’.  I’m not sure that the tale of how this came about can be conveyed as well on paper as in speech, but I’ll try it anyway.  

My first series for Foyle focused on my own full-time job and was most originally called ‘Teacher, Teacher.’  Just before the first programme was due to be aired, I had a call from a very posh-sounding gentleman in London called Chaaahles – Charles to you.  He told me that ‘Radio Times’ had commissioned Sean McMahon to write an article on my upcoming series and could I please contact him.  ‘Can’t I write it myself?’ I asked.  No, I couldn’t he said because I was too close to the material and they wanted a more objective viewpoint.  But was I interested in writing for them?  Yes, indeed I was.

And indeed Chaaahles took me at my word.  A few days later, his plummy voice came down the line again.  Was I still interested?  I was.  Did I know anything about peegs and hawses and kys?  Sorry? Peegs and hawses and kys.  Pardon?  After excuses about a bad line etc. I finally cracked it.  Pigs and horses and cows.  No, I didn’t know a lot about farm animals.  Apparently that was fine and I was charged with writing 1,000 words about a future outside broadcast from Enniskillen Agricultural Show.

I clapped my hands with delight at this fresh opportunity.  Dismay and consternation soon followed.  I’d rushed out to buy an armful of farming magazines, but neither ‘The Progressive Farmer’ nor ‘The Small Stock Journal’ nor ‘Grassmen’ nor ‘Practical Pigs’ was throwing up any inspiration.  How to get a handle on this?  How to make it interesting?  Anita was as much use as a chocolate fireguard.  She wouldn’t even deign to think about the subject.  Farming, muck, ugh.  She shuddered and not a hair moved.  In the end, I based it on fair days in Cushendall.

My mate Chaahles loved it and more commissions followed.

What was it about those times?  There was such optimism and trust abroad.  Russell McKay offered me a job without ever meeting me (possibly because he’d never met me), Ian Kennedy gave me, and so many others, the wings to fly on air and here too was the bold Chaahles, who didn’t know me from a hole in the ground – hardly spoke the same language - assuming I could write just ‘cos I said so.  And there was me, making so many forays out of my comfort zone.  Probably because I didn’t have the wit to do otherwise.

Those were definitely the days, my friends, and Derry was the place to spend them in.

Lovely as the village and people were, everybody in my birthplace, Cushendall, knew the other’s business and I felt constrained.  Then we went to Belfast, where few knew or cared and I felt isolated.  And then came Derry with the best of both worlds.  A city with the heart of a village, a place to participate when the mood took you or withdraw when it didn’t.

I felt free and empowered in Derry.  I did a prodigious amount of work there and (I don’t know what it is about brushes) but I was frequently as daft as one too.  Nowhere else would I have dyed my hair green for Paddy’s Day, nowhere else would I have spent a day with the bin-men and nowhere else would my late and bearded husband have reveled in dressing up as the Sugar Plum Fairy.   But that’s another story…………………………………..