Abseiling Spiders

DO ABSEILING SPIDERS WEAR CRAMPONS IN WINTER?

By

PETER MORRIS

Published by Peter Morris at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Peter Morris

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Chapter list

Border Connections

Bright Lights Calling

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Chocks Away

Three Greens

Stake & Chips

A Welcome In The Valley’s

Docker

On Yer Bike

Knot Me

Who Me?

Freddie Laker

Quick Jars & Snifters

Three Wheels On My Waggon

Beds, Knobs & Broomsticks

Cochem

OASC

Wattisham

Peggy Sue

Final Approach

Border Connections

I was born in Belfast in 1957. I was told that my mother had died giving birth to me and that my father, a recently qualified professional, had decided to leave the country and pursue his career, I was to be adopted. Because of that I would often stand at the end of the avenue at the boarding school I attended, watching the traffic on the Belfast to Dublin Road, and hope that my biological father would turn up and rescue me from the nightmare that was Violet Hill, or as I came to know it, Violent Hell.

Violet Hill, otherwise known as Saint Coleman’s College, was, and still is one of the top academic schools in Ireland. All the male members of my new mother’s family had attended Violet Hill, one had even died there. One Uncle, a priest, had returned from the missions in Africa and was teaching there. Now it was my turn. I was there along with a couple of hundred other boys, but I was so alone. It was a violent and brutal school, determined to churn out proper little gentlemen at any cost. This was education through fear. For some reason I didn’t fit in. At that time I was one of only two boys from Belfast. Our accents had us stand out as ‘different’. The fact that I was the only boy at the school to wear short trousers didn’t help.

I shall never forget my first day at the school, standing at the end of the avenue, a point that we were not allowed to walk past, as my parents drove away in the car. That was bad enough, but my first night in the dormitory was perhaps even more memorable. Tradition was hugely important at this school. The senior prefect, also known as the head boy, had a single room outside our dormitory while at the other end of the dormitory was a priest’s rooms, who many years later became president of the school.

The top dormitory was a barn of a room. No carpets, no curtains and just bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. I think that there must have been about thirty boys in that dormitory. That first night we were all in bed, the lights were out and the senior prefect came in. He introduced himself and then welcomed us to the school, informing us that he would be our big brother, our protector. But there was just one thing he had to warn us about. He turned and pointed to the statue above the entrance door of the dormitory. It was a plaster statue of Our Lady, about four feet tall, but one of the hands was missing.

The head boy began to tell the tale of how one night the devil came into the dormitory. We were all young, impressionable, Irish, Catholic boys, educated on the fire and brimstone principal. A mental image of some hairy, hoofed, horned beast prowling around in the dark would have been quite plausible for us. We listened, as he told us how the devil selected one poor little boy to take back to Hell with him. The statue came to life and began to fight with the devil. This was an Irish Catholic boarding school, so the thought of Our Lady, in her long flowing robes, going for two falls and a submission like Mick Mac Manus and Big Daddy, on a Saturday afternoon was for us, quite believable.

The head boy then explained how the devil had been beaten and returned to Hell in shame but that Our Lady had lost a hand in the fight. This severed hand was now evil and crawled around the dormitory, in the dark of night, looking for innocent little souls to take away to Hell. The head boy left the dormitory while thirty little pairs of eyes stared into the darkness and thirty pairs of ear strained for the slightest indication that someone or something might approach. Some boys even cried.

A little while later we heard the first thump. A single noise cracked in the distance. A noise, which was loud enough to get our attention but one that no-one could really identify . Then another sharp thump, followed by another, each of us trying to figure out what was happening. As the noises grew louder, more frequent and closer, we moved from fear to terror. The door of the dormitory opened and standing there was a beast, we could see the silhouette, horns, an enormous head and we could actually hear the hooves slap and clatter on the bare wooden floor. We could feel the beast breathe, and snort, and wheeze, as it came into the dormitory.

The lights flicked on and the priest, whose room was at the other end of the dormitory came in, wanting to know what a fecking cow was doing in the dormitory. The senior boys had taken a poor old cow from the school farm and shoved it into the dorm. We had been scared witless. Now we secretly wished that we could be seniors so that we could have our turn of scaring the new boys. There was a similar scam at Christmas and Easter when the head boy would come in and announce that half a dozen boys would have to stay at school for the holiday and serve mass for the priests. He would read out a carefully prepared list of names. That didn’t go down too well as we would all have our bags packed ready for the off the following day.

The priests appeared to glide their way around the school in their long black cassocks under which they carried an amazing selection of weaponry. There would be the standard cane, strap and anything else that could be used to ‘correct’ a child’s behaviour. To be fair, many of them wouldn’t use weapons, they preferred to use their boots and fists. And that is what really annoys me. We were children, being children. I was telling a story about one particularly vicious priest to my favourite aunt, when I finished she said, Oh, he’s now my parish priest. But he’s all right as long as he takes his medication.

That same thug began to give my cousin ‘six of the best’ one day. My cousin suffered an epileptic fit and was thrashing about on the ground. The priest was so dim-witted he thought that my cousin was fighting back so he laid into him with his fists. I saw senior boys at the annual pupils versus staff football match think that they could strike him, being stretchered off the pitch. Added to his brutality was the fact that his eyesight was very poor and we would, when being punished by him, try to move our hands so that he would hit our hands and not our forearms. If he noticed he would accuse you of cowardice, but this was better than spending the following twenty four hours nursing a line of throbbing welts along your forearms, like a druggie with poor eyesight.

There was one floor of the building given over to the priests. It was a long corridor and known as the priest’s corridor. The rooms along one side, the front of the building, were the priest’s day rooms while the room directly opposite, at the rear of the building, would be their bedroom. We had two televisions in the school, for pupils, one in the senior study hall and one in the junior study hall. We were allowed to watch one programme a week, which was normally Top of the Pops. One of the greatest privileges was to be released from the study hall and taken to a priest’s room where you would have tea and biscuits and watch television. I had an uncle there, and was never invited to his room. In fact he hardly spoke to me.

Perhaps he thought that the other boys might see it as favouritism and give me a hard time. Like my father, the headmaster of the largest primary school in Belfast. He would drive to and from school every day but would not give me a lift, not even in inclement weather, in case the other boys picked on me.

This was Belfast in the late sixties and ‘The Troubles’ were brewing. We lived on the Woodvale Road, which connects the Shankill Road to the Ardoyne. It was a mainly loyalist area. The next Catholic family along, moving up, towards the Ardoyne, were the Leneghan’s. One of the girls, Mary, along with my sister Carol, used to use me for snogging practise at a time when I didn’t really know what snogging was. I only mention this in passing because today she is known by her married name of Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland.

In the Ardoyne area there were two secondary schools, Saint Gabriel’s, a Catholic secondary school for boys and Somerdale, a Protestant secondary school for boys. These two schools were almost directly opposite each other on the Crumlin Road, just above the shops at Ardoyne. Eventually they had to arrange to have different finishing times to try and stop the routine rioting and fighting that went on between the pupils after school. In the morning most pupils would make their way towards their own particular school, many still half asleep and many would still be chomping on a bit of toast or finishing their homework. I would have to walk up the Woodvale Road toward Ardoyne with all the Protestant boys aiming for Summerdale, then turn down the Crumlin road and walk against all the Catholic boys heading for Saint Gabriel’s. Mornings were not normally a problem.

However after school, walking up the Crumlin Road, boys returning home from Saint Gabriel’s would stop and interrogate me.

Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?

A Catholic, I would answer.

Say fuck the Queen.

Fuck the Queen.

Say the Hail Mary.

In Irish, Latin or English? I would answer, and would normally be sent on my way with a kick in the arse.

If the adolescents were rioting at Ardoyne, I would get a police escort around onto the Woodvale Road where I would normally be stopped by a bunch of Protestant boys from Somerdale.

Are you a Catholic or a Protestant? they would ask.

Protestant, I would reply.

Say fuck the Pope.

Fuck the Pope.

Sing the sash.

It was old but it was beautiful….

My deception worked wonderfully well until one day a gang of Saint Gabriel boys caught me on the Woodvale Road and when I said I was a Protestant, I got a hammering. I remember this because there were about five of them against just me and my badminton racket. We lost and because I had damaged my badminton racket, defending myself, my father gave me a lecture about the price of these things and then tried to hammer his words down my ears with his fists.

At Violet Hill it was not just the other boys who would rough you up a bit for talking with a Belfast accent, but the priests, who would always say, ‘this will hurt me more than you’. In fact the beatings were so bad that some parents actually began to believe what their children were telling them. Rather than continuing to accept the brutality as tradition, parents approached the school and demanded that the level of violence be lowered. This resulted in a very interesting approach to punishment.

Priests were no longer allowed to carry weapons, classrooms became demilitarized zones. They could keep their weaponry in their rooms. But if a child was to be disciplined in the classroom, the child was sent to the president’s office and had to sign for a cane, take the cane to the priest, receive his punishment and then return the cane and sign it back in. Have you ever tried to write after a thug has pulverised your hands with a stick? Very civilised! Sending the child out of the classroom was supposed to give the priest time to calm down. Returning the cane gave you time to cry or hold on to anything cold and try to dissipate the pain from your throbbing little hands.

After classes, any boy who was caught doing something wrong would be ordered to report to that priest’s day room, at half past seven in the evening, and receive his punishment. Every evening at half past seven there would be lines of boys outside each priest’s room and some boys would move from one room to another, collecting six of the best from two, three or even four priests. One nasty man would touch the cane against the top of the door frame and then bring the cane to the floor, slicing through your offered hand on the way down, and these men called themselves Christians.

On day a priest ordered me to the president’s office to get a cane, I was to be punished. This was a double whammy because having to enter your name in a book meant that there was a permanent record of your supposed wrong doing and your punishment. I arrived at the president’s office and knocked on the door. No answer, so I went in. His secretary wasn’t there, so I moved across that office to the president’s office and knocked. No answer. I stepped in.

There was an old wooden locker in one corner where the canes were stored. I opened it and wondered which one I should choose. A thick, or a thin cane? A short cane, or a long flexible one? I allowed my instincts to take over. I leaned in to the cupboard and took every single cane out and left the office. Rather than return to the classroom and take the beating I knew I was going to get, I went straight out through the main doors of the school, across the car park and made my stand on the croquet lawn.

I dumped the canes in a pile and began twisting and breaking them. It wasn’t long before someone spotted me. A cheer went up, then another. Boys were hanging out of windows screaming and cheering while from the corner of my eye I could see fluttering black robes closing in on me. I’m not sure how many canes I managed to destroy, but I did experience my first ever illegal rugby tackle, and we didn’t even play rugby at the school. My parents were summoned from Belfast. The school wanted rid of me. I didn’t mind, I didn’t want to be there. Unfortunately I stayed, but only on the condition that I attended sessions with a child psychologist. The school were hoping to have me classed as insane, but on the final day of my sessions, when the psychologist announced that I was sane, the lines of battle between myself and the clergy had been firmly drawn.

After that I was most certainly treated differently by the priests. I was allowed to do my own thing, which is perhaps what they had planned. One day a new Dean arrived. He was a past pupil of the school, but he was six foot six tall and built like the proverbial red-bricked shit house. We called him Bam. The school went very quiet because we all wanted to see if the first person Bam would thrash, would survive. A Lurgan boy, Brian Lavery and myself were caught smoking by Bam. We were told to report to his day room at half past seven that evening.

Getting punished by the Dean at half past seven in the evening was perhaps one of the worst forms of punishment at the school. It wasn’t the actual pain of the thrashing; it was because the Dean’s day room was directly outside the senior study hall. This meant that both doors of the study hall were opened so that the punishment was observed by every senior at the school. Brian and I arrived and opened the doors and prepared ourselves as best we could. Every senior pupil was laughing and pointing at us, waiting to see just how vicious Bam was going to be and I am sure they were taking bets on whether we would survive.

Bam came out of his day room and closed the doors to the study hall, as if he didn’t want there to be any witnesses. We all expected that this was going to be bad.

Go and get your towels, he ordered, and as you can imagine both Brian and I believed that we were going to have to mop up our own blood.

Our punishment however was to have a cold shower and the school, rather than erupting into mass hysteria and mayhem, actually breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. The fear had gone and it was lovely, as it is supposed to be for little boys. Unfortunately Bam didn’t last and before long he was moved and the previous Dean, ‘The Wee Scutter’, was brought back. The week that he returned saw the school on retreat. This meant that for one week there were no classes. We all wandered around meditating and praying. Sorry, we were all meant to meditate and pray. But there was a gang of us who knew a few priest-free zones and we would congregate there smoking, chatting, telling jokes, looking at pictures of naked women with no clothes on and playing cards. All standard activities for young, growing, boys.

One priest-free area was a grotto, high on the school grounds, which provided shelter from the weather and plenty of warning if a priest was approaching. Myself and another fellow crept along the school fence, hidden by bushes till we arrived at the grotto which unfortunately was populated by senior boys. They were bored and decided that, as there was a nice stone altar in the grotto, that one of us should be sacrificed, as they say in Ireland, just for the craic.

I was stretched out on this altar while a Newry lad, known as Dodo, performed some ceremony which he had learned from watching too many movies that featured Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. It was great fun but as everyone was watching Dodo and his wonderful performance, no one saw the Dean, the wee Scutter, creep up and surprise us all. He announced his arrival by swishing his cane like Zorro would his sword. Dodo panicked as he looked for somewhere to hide the cigarette he was smoking. He decided that the handiest hiding spot was the breast pocket of my blazer. Which certainly did live up to its name.

I began to spend more and more time in the toilets. There was nothing wrong with me and I wasn’t hoping to meet any George Michael types. I simply didn’t like going to certain classes and found that, especially after the incident with the canes, no one really cared. During one double period, I was hiding in the toilets, when three other fellows came in. Two were from Lurgan, and one from Warrenpoint. We knew each other and had a bit of a laugh and smoked a couple of cigarettes. One boy found a hacksaw blade, left by some workmen, and began to saw through the roller towel rail. He left it in such a state that the next person to dry their hands would probably pull the rail off the wall. Another boy sawed through the down pipes on a toilet, from the head high cistern to the bowl. He arranged the cut so that any person flushing that toilet would get a face full of water.

The third boy sawed through the knuckle of some of the taps. These were pressure taps, where you pushed the top of the tap, water came out but the tap gradually released itself and stopped the flow. Now, with the nozzle blocked with toilet paper, anyone pushing the tap down to operate would be showered with water. These three were only bunking off one period and left the toilets. I remained, but as luck would have it was found by the Dean, The wee Scutter, who, when the damage was reported to him, managed to get two plus two, to equal sixteen.

I was locked in the president’s bedroom. Why the presidents bedroom I have no idea, but my parents were told to come and collect me. I was expelled on the spot. I explained that I hadn’t caused the damage and they began saying that I should do the honourable thing and tell them who did do it. They didn’t deserve the truth and I realised that if I kept my mouth shut, I just might be free.

Unfortunately it was just before the summer holidays, so I was taken away from the school, back to Belfast. My parents and family were ashamed although they continued to communicate with the school in the hope that I might return. I couldn’t see the point.

One evening, towards the end of the summer holidays, dad erupted into a panic. He herded my mother, my sister and myself upstairs to the front bedroom where we had to lie on the floor. This was quite different and exciting but unfortunately a crowd of two or three hundred people had gathered outside our house and were demanding that we leave. Suddenly I believed that I knew how Frankenstein’s monster felt when the local’s tried to break into the castle and kill him. All that was missing were the pitchforks. Luckily our next door neighbour was a senior member of the Shankill Orange lodge and he managed to persuade the crowd to go away. They did and the very next day so did we.

For my birthday I had asked for a brand new racing bicycle, with curved front handle bars, they cost thirty six pounds. My dad gave me a five pound note and told me that I could build one for five pounds. It doesn’t really compute when it’s your birthday, but that what my parents were like. Once a year I was always taken to a tailor in Warrenpoint where I would try on different clothes and coats and shoes, but after a year or two I realised that one set of what I was trying on would be for my birthday and the other for Christmas. Sort of took the excitement away from opening presents when you knew what was in them.

My best friend Dessie Kinning had helped me build my bike for the required fiver, although we had managed