Ulster Rambles BY DAVID MACCONNELL
AS FAR AS I KNOW, IN ALL THE YEARS I HAVE BEEN WRITING FOR THIS GREAT LITTLE MAG, I HAVE AVOIDED THE WORD ‘TROUBLES’. IT SEEMS TO FIT WITH MOST PEOPLE’S PERCEPTION OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING OVER THE LAST 50 YEARS OR SO IN THE PROVINCE BUT NOT FOR ME. Recently, I looked up the word in my thesaurus and found the following. 1. Dilemmas (n) Dilemmas, Plights, Predicaments, Difficulties, Quandaries, Scrapes. Not really, I thought to myself. 2. Worries (n) Worries, Distresses, Anxieties, Cares, Misfortunes, Sufferings, Woes, Concerns A little better here but still not right! 3. Problems (n) Problems, Difficulties, Dilemmas, Messes, Nuisances, Snags, Dangers, Hitches, Faults, Hassles, Breakdowns, Trials, Tribulations Maybe! 4. Unrests (n) Unrests, Disorders, Disturbances, Conflicts Ah yes: getting closer. 5. Efforts (n) Not worth commenting here; and lastly 6. Complaints (n) I will let you decide if the word covers some of the Trials, Tribulations and yes Troubles. In the early days, I often thought I had a semblance of a solution by integrating the schools. I certainly was not brave enough to voice such an opinion in public. 40 | THE IRISH SCENE
Recently, I believe it has started to happen. I was looking up my old school and it seems that nowadays it is quite mixed as far as religion goes. This fact has been confirmed by a few of my colleagues who still reside thereabouts! I was going to write about the school I attended but have since decided that not everyone wants to read that kind of article at Christmas time or probably any other time for that matter. Instead, I am going to tell a story of what it was like to live there in the seventies (nineteen seventy-four that is). I had been living in Spain for three years at that point and was more than naïve about how to conduct myself in the Province. To prove this, I have taken an extract from a novel I was writing some years ago. Like many aspiring authors before me, I never finished it. It had all started eight months earlier when I had returned from the U.S. after a two year relationship with an American girl; a much longer story which I might well write about in the future. That is enough of that. Just before Christmas, I found myself back in Belfast where I had qualified a few years earlier with a B.Sc. I had little money so I took a teaching job in an area of Belfast where I had never been before. The reason that I had never been before was that it was one of the main sectarian parts of the city. One simply did not go there especially if one did not have to. I had missed a lot of the action in the Province as I had been living in Spain so I took little notice of any advice that was given and unasked for. Needless to say I made a few mistakes.
