Lord Lucan Is Alive And Well And Visiting Sligo

"Sometimes, Christians can get over-attached to a building, furniture, a form of words, the organ, or a particular style of hymn. I hope that others see that, for us, people and their connection both with each other and Jesus Christ are the most important parts of being a church."
- from a pamphlet by land-grabber Vicar Guy Chave-Cox

By Charley Brady

In this world that we exist in; in this world that is so beautiful when you take a walk around Galway Bay; in this world that has so much to offer us and not the other way around I wonder, I just wonder.

Like Miracleman, sometimes I just wonder.

This morning I went for a long walk along the Bay and was yet again mesmerised by the sheer wonderful feeling that a person gets when they see things that are just so absolutely perfect.

There's a lot of bad things about any country, of course there is; but there is a peacefulness in this island that we sometimes just don't get and yet we should be in tune with.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: the next thing is that I'll be waving prayer beads in the air and doing some chanting to the nonexistent Gods. You needn't worry because that will never happen. When you're dead, you're dead and that's the end of it.

Yet I was looking today at the crab apples growing just next to where I live and I couldn't help but think that this strange planet of ours produces things that it would take a genius to come up with.

It's that simple: you look at a sunset (especially around here) and you find yourself choked at the back of your throat because it is just so perfect. There are the colours and the light that makes those colours even more beautiful than they already are.

OK, I'm going to sicken you now because any long term readers of this column know that I'm just a smarmy and sarcastic git, but I sat back and looked at a rainbow just a couple of days ago. A bloody rainbow, for crying out loud. It was just a rainbow but I was mesmerised.

So many memories came back to me. They were memories going back to where life hadn't kicked the s*** out of me; they were memories of when I used to ride my bike everywhere at the age of twelve.

They were memories of when an apple tasted like an apple, when we left the windows open all the time and never thought of locking the doors. They were memories of when my first pair of long trousers was a girl's trousers with the zip up the side because my parents couldn't afford the pair that I wanted.

Because of that shagging rainbow the memories just came flooding back.

My old man arriving in of an evening and trundling the brothers and myself down to the beach to go swimming. What a guy. Most fathers came home from work and went off down to the pub, but not Tom.

It wasn't until after he had died that we found his little notebooks of poetry. I sat there after his funeral, reading them and I just cried, because it was a part of his life that I knew bugger all about.

I never cried at the funeral, mind you, because he went in the whole of his health (the usual contradiction) and just the way he would have wanted to go; but I did cry afterwards because his poetry was something that he had kept hidden from us. There was one on the birth of his first-born in 1959 - myself - that I keep to me because I feel I must have been such a huge disappointment to him in later years.

Where Tom had a love for people I just always had anger: where he believed in redemption I just always believed in vengeance. One thing is for sure: it hasn't made me a happier person. Tom was a happy man throughout his whole life.

I'm not sure that I could say he had friends but he didn't NOT have friends, if that makes any sense. His best friend was my Mother.

His big interests were Celtic football team and the history of the American Indians.

Jeez, the place was full of Indian statuettes and paintings. To my mind he had a sentimentalised view of the way that they lived. If the Old Man had been twenty years younger I would probably say that he had a kind of New Age view of them.

But that was my Dad, and I wouldn't have swapped him for anything.

He died at the age of 74, doing what he always loved: helping people. At that time he was working in a hospital that took care of "old people" as he put it, never being one to see that he was old himself at that stage.

I never visit his grave since he is not there, but occasionally I do visit the well that the hospital put up with his name on it. Something tells me that this is where he would most like to be remembered.

I often think of what a bane I must have been on the Old Man. For example, when I was a kid all I was interested in was books and theatre. He couldn't get his head around this (which is why we were all stunned to find that he had been secretly writing poetry all those years) and then when it came out that I had a talent for boxing, you never saw a guy so chuffed. He was just so delighted.

He was also over the moon, but trying not to show it, when I brought my first girlfriend, Isabel, home. I know that he was worried that I was swinging from the other side but in those days you just didn't talk about such things. So he was as happy as Larry that his son not only had a young lady but was also respected in the ring.

Strange days and I suppose we can laugh at them now, but back then it was a big deal that your son was going to the theatre and had even taken to wearing women's perfume. Daring at the time; and of course he didn't see that it was just to be controversial. I always liked winding him up.

God knows, I must have really upset that man at times.

Tom was a life-long Irish Republican and that was another bone of contention between us; but it wasn't until his funeral where so many turned up to say how he had helped them through tough times that my brothers and I just looked at each other in amazement, never having known the depths of the guy.

He was working down the mines at the age of 13, something that I can't even imagine, before getting out and joining the navy. He worked in the submarines in 1945 where he perforated an eardrum.

Yet one of the things that he did me a favour with is this: as a navy man he was covered in tattoos, one of them being to "Jean". Later, when he married my mother, this would always come back to haunt him. It taught me a valuable lesson: as often as I've thought of having a tattoo I never will. It's just not worth it.

Crikey, can you imagine being nagged on your choice of name for the rest of your natural?

So there you go: the Old Fella is off the twig these seven years now and life goes on.

Many thanks to editor Grahame by the way for allowing me this indulgence.

Tom, wherever your molecules are floating around at the moment, I miss you.

We would have something in common to be disgusted with this week, Dad, if you hadn't gotten that valve clamp on the old brain pan seven years ago. We would both be amazed as each other at the return of the despicable absentee landlords.

God knows you couldn't stand them, so you would have been appalled at the English vicar and his wife who have returned, like Spectres of Death in order to take their grubby money from deeds that reach back over two centuries

I'm talking about English vicar the Reverend Guy Chave-Cox and his wife Heather who have appeared out of the wild blue yonder last week in County Sligo in order to grasp ground rents from people who didn't even have a clue that they owed any.

This slimy excuse for a vicar, who of course isn't entitled to bugger all - but his wife is, supposedly - arrogantly proclaimed to the peasants of Sligo that:

"You know, I am a vicar and vicars are honest and clear about things. All we want is what's right and fair."

Well, it's not really quite as simple as that, is it Vicar? And by the way, proclaiming your ignorant self to the rooftops as a holier than thou Man of the Cloth cuts no damned ice with me at all. It just makes me all the more suspicious and dislike you all the more.

Let's get this straight and please correct me where I get it wrong, Vicar Chave-Cox and your impressive double-barrelled name. You are the vicar of a teeny little congregation in Devon, England. You left your calling as a sales rep after you had a more impressive calling from the Lord God Almighty, His Supreme Majesty Jesus the Christ Who told you to start teaching courses in how to be a better Christian.

Am I right so far, vicar? If I am not, then please take me to task because I myself have just had a vision this very second from Our Lord Morningstar telling me that what you are inflicting on the people of Rosses Point, Ireland is surely the most un-Christian thing that I've heard in a long time.

Even Morningstar thinks that you are a bad git and coming from Him that's really saying something.

You are actually talking about EVICTING Irish people from land that in many cases they have had for decades and more, never realising that there is Evil like you and your kind out stalking the hills.

And of course - surprise, surprise - this has nothing to do with him at all. It is his wife's "land" that he is suddenly interested in. Still with me, vicar? Can I get you a cup of tea while you're waiting? Your brother Alistair says that it's only because of your interest in genealogy - in between painting your water colours as a good vicar should - that you came across the idea of investigating your (wife's) legal options.

What happened, Vicar, with you and your ghastly wife? Did the money till behind your eyes suddenly go ching-ching?

The brother goes on to say: "It's a hereditary title passed either to Heather's mother or to Heather's father's line. It's an ancestral claim to the property which was all on penny rent... they have always known in Heather's family that they had the title to this land."

Yeah, but it took a smart operator like the vicar to push this to the fore, didn't it? This smacks of what the Scots put up with and what the Irish put up with and what the Welsh put up with only a century or so ago. Now that the solicitors' letters are flying from this unscrupulous pair of Christians I do wonder how they can sleep at night, knowing the anguish that they have caused in particular amongst the oldest in the community who believed that they had a home for life.

What next? Will the murderer Lord Lucan or his relatives return to demand ground rent from the Irish peasants?

One lady, who watched her neighbour being served with a warning to get out, said:

"It just seems so unfair that these people can waltz into the area and upset so many people like this. All this is just pure greed. People have worked hard to pay mortgages down through the years and now these people are coming in here because of some ancient ownership deal which they are trying to cash in on. This man calls himself a vicar. What kind of Christianity is it that warns people that they will be turfed out on the road if they do not pay up rent to the descendents of a man who died more than a century ago?"

And these people don't even need the money, not that it would matter to their cold hearts if they did.

And I think again about my father. I know what he would have had to say about it. Hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net