Letter to the Kremlin

I graduated from Hopeless Street in 1954, when I was nine years old, and started in O’Connell School (O.C.S.). It consisted of a primary and secondary school catering for 9 to 18 year olds. It was situated at the other end of the North Circular Road about 3 miles away. It was run by a branch of the Waffen SS, and the School Principal was an SS Obergruppenfuehrer from the 1st SS-Panzer-Division Leibstandarte 'Adolf Hitler'. It was very right wing and tended to produce pupils that were either on the far right or the far left. A breeding ground for extremists and fundamentalists. I didn’t take it seriously and it made me anti Irish and anti Catholic at that time.
By the age of eight I had stopped going to church and had written to Moscow, expressing an interest in their system. They replied to my letter and sent me two books, one of which was The USSR today, which gave comprehensive geographical detail as well as information on over forty ethnic groups who populated the vast area, which covers twelve time zones. The sheer scale of the area and the temperature spans, especially in parts of Siberia, where the difference between the coldest and hottest temperatures can sometimes exceeds 100 Celsius degrees.
The second book had a red cover with a photo of Lenin. There were many pictures of the Soviet life style, portraying the advantages of communism. I wasn’t impressed, as it appeared to be a rather grey place with too much sameness and uniformity. The lack of a class system made it seem dull and drab – with no sparkle, no spontaneity, no sense of fun, and no magic. The conformity of the grey buildings in the different cities looked depressingly dead.
It didn’t light up my world and I decided to pass on this one.
My father went ballistic, as he was ferociously opposed to Stalin and didn’t want any literature on him. He had been born before the Russian revolution and Stalin and Hitler were not his icons. It didn’t bother my mother, as she was focused on her own world and had no interest in events outside of her domain.©

My first memory of music

This was my first memory of music, when I became fully aware of my existence – the unforgettable Vera Lynn’s:

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when
But I'm sure we'll meet again some sunny day… *

I was on Parkgate Street in Dublin with my parents, when a big Ford V8 military truck passed along the street, filled with soldiers in steel helmets and holding rifles. I thought they were coming back home from a war. There were about 30 of them singing ‘We’ll meet again’ in harmony and I was captivated. They sang like a choir with strong voices and took the attention of the street.
It was 1949 and I was a 4-year-old toddler, less than 2 feet tall, in this new big exciting world for the first time, and I didn’t know why I was here or what was happening, but it looked very dramatic and interesting to me.
I had been born just up the street at the top of the North Circular Road, beside the Phoenix Park in Dublin, when Hitler was hiding in his bunker. Before I was born one of his Luftwaffe pilots flew over my city by mistake and blew half of the North Strand away, situated at the other end of the North Circular, where I later went to school. Apparently he couldn’t find England.

The Park became my playground, my Disneyland, all of its 1,760 acres, enclosed by seven miles of granite wall to make it nice and cosy and private. I now owned one of the biggest play stations in the world.
It was my fantasyland, where I could become many different people and act out many different roles. There was lots of space to explore my different thoughts, fantasies and humours, any entertainment you wish on demand without ever pressing a button. This was my first theatre, my first stage, my first cinema and the beginning of my first picture show.
It was the start of my escape into dreams, unlimited dreams, where I could create many different worlds and change them at will – and replace the actors whenever I wished. It was so easy, so convenient – it was a walk in the park.
I wake up and then close my eyes again, and escape into sleep, into my own dreamy magic worlds and dream whatever I wish and do what I wish.

***

And we all went up to the Mero, hey there, who's your man

It's only Johnny Forty Coats, sure he's desperate man

Bang Bang shoots the buses with his golden key

Hey hi diddley I and out goes she

***

The Dublin of this time was a female city, soft and innocent, slow and easy, full of songs and stories, a city of contradictions, mystery and larger than life characters.
In my area we had ‘Johnny Forty Coats’ who wore lots of clothes and slept rough; ‘Bang Bang’ who jumped on the buses and pointed his finger at the passengers and said “Bang - bang”. And poor old ‘Hairy Dan’, who slept in Billy King’s field off the North Circular known as ‘The Norrier’. He was reputed to have come from a respectable family and had trained as a doctor, and then cracked up.
We often shouted “Forty coats” at ‘Johnny Forty Coats’, as he cycled past on his antique bicycle laden down with his belongings. He was a big, strong, wiry bastard, mad as a toenail, with a determined dangerous look, and would jump off his bike, and park it against a lamp post or a wall, and give us a vigorous chase.
Despite all his coats, which he even wore in the summer, he could run fast, but luckily he never managed to catch us.
The area around the Park was a military area with a hospital, two barracks, Army HQ and Intelligence HQ close together and linked by tunnels.
There were many soldiers in the area and sometimes, when they cycled past, my brother Sylvester would shout after them:
“Ireland’s only hope, England’s only fear”.
Some of them didn’t take kindly to this remark and would stop their bike, and wave their fist shouting
“I’ll break your neck you bastard. You’ll be sorry. I swear!”
One day a big, strong, redheaded trooper with a fiery temper jumped off his racing bike and gave a long and determined chase in his hob-nailed boots. The brother and myself ran for our lives and escaped yet again, as we had a head start and knew the area inside out. ©

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