I happened on the football results on Saturday and it catapulted me back to the years when I sat with my granny and we guessed the results on our big cabinet wireless. The fire was lit in the dining room, I was having milk, bread, butter and home made raspberry jam, the big teapot was covered in a bright felt cosy in the shape of a country cottage, chimney pot, thatched roof, red door and embroidered lupins and blue delphiniums. It must have been Duncan Hearle who read the football results and we almost knew what was coming thanks to his inflection and we anticipated with great enthusiasm.
I’m guessing results here!
“Crusaders 1, (upward inflection) Glenavon 2: Glentoran 4, Linfield (pause, disappointed voice) 2: Ballymena United 1 (excited voice) Carrick Rangers 3.”
Radio History
Duncan Hearle had quite a history living in Singapore just before World War ll he was imprisoned and worked on the Burma railway. In 1946 he applied for an announcing job in the BBC and was posted to Ormeau Avenue to work on the Home Service and he must have liked it as he stayed for the next 30 years. Looking up his history he presented over 20,000 local news bulletins and was known as the Voice of Radio Ulster. Duncan retired from broadcasting on 21st September 1976 following his last bulletin that morning at 8.55 a.m.
He also brought us the results of the local point-to-point races and that’s what we were waiting for. Would our family favourite romp home? We called her Silverstream because that’s where we lived and she grew up in a stable especially built in the garden. I loved walking her along the tide on the edge of the Lough shore at Jordanstown, mixing the mash, the smell of the bran, stirring in the pellets with an apple or a carrot for afters. Dunging out was my job too! A grape with four prongs to lift the dung and shake out the straw. How I loved those days and when I was old enough the excitement of going off to the races with my uncle to see our horse gallop over the fences and sometimes coming home the winner, Punchestown and Fairy House are still magical names.
Silverstream raced under the stable name of Desert Fly and to this day we have the belief she was a distant relative of Desert Orchid possibly of the same blood line, a grey rated fifth best National Hunt horse of all time. My brother Johnny and I have an arrangement that when we hear of a horse with Desert in its name we put a fiver on the nose to win, sorry granny! So far only one positive result!
Again I was fortunate. My uncle’s trainer was the famous Willie Rooney whose stables were beyond Glengormley in the countryside with a view over Co. Antrim, if I’m right it was called Mount Top. There I became friends with the family, mother Carrie and the children Ann, Eissen and Rosemary and their brother who died in an accident, sadly Rosemary died three years ago when on holiday in Australia. Such memories. I recall Mrs. Rooney baked beautiful buns, iced and with hundreds and thousands on top and travelling in the big horse waggon.
Mr. Rooney was a Welshman who came to live in Ireland and became famous for setting a record for the most wins in Irish point-to-points at that time. Success ran in the family with Ann becoming the first woman to win the Irish Grand National in 1984 on the horse Bentom Bay trained by her father. Rosemary finished third in the same race.
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Look Forward In Hope
Last Sunday in January – where does time go. A minute ago it was Christmas, then New Year then Blue Monday and St. Valentines Day on the horizon. Did you notice Blue Monday? Why do we depress ourselves. As it turned out it was a magnificent day, in Belfast anyway, and the Wolf moon was full and spectacular yet the third Monday in January is always deemed to be Blue Monday, only because someone decreed we could be feeling down as Christmas was over, the colourful decorations put away for another year and time to reckon up the money spent over the last few weeks. Who says? It just might be a happy day with a hint of spring in the air and the buds filling out for a spectacular display in the not too distant future.
However, depression is a very real and terrible thing, no point in telling someone who is really down to pull themselves together, to count their blessings, to realise there are people worse off. That is insulting.
And people jump on the band waggon with cures and advice, better to listen to professions and to the person themselves.
How’s this for news from the Penn State College of `Medicine in Pennsylvania where they have ‘discovered’ that mushrooms could lower the risk of depression. Notice the word ‘could’. Apparently ‘certain fungi have long been deemed superfoods with a string of health advantages including cutting the risk of developing cancer and helping people to live longer’. Their study of 24,000 adults showed that those who ate mushrooms had less chance of suffering depression. The fungi contain ergothioneine which is an antioxidant that apparently helps prevent several mental illnesses. ‘White button mushrooms the most common variety also contain potassium which is believed to lower anxiety’.
But be careful of the mushrooms you choose! I remember years ago being in company over dinner at a restaurant in Hillsborough and I had a dish of mushroom risotto and boy did I suffer. It was like eating soggy rice and brown slugs but towards the end of eating my head started going round. I don’t know if I was hallucinating but the next thing I knew I was sitting in the passenger seat of my car. I don’t know how I got there or how long I was there but I was very upset that no one came to look for me! Irrationally so! I felt very ill for a few hours afterwards so It wasn’t a very magic evening.
We went to see BELFAST on Wednesday. No surprise in the story line, Protestant family forced out of their home in West Belfast and flee to England. The crowd scenes are spectacular and certainly I felt the fear of being on the inside of the violence rather than an onlooker. Hinds as the grandfather grounded the whole thing with his sensitive acting and little Jude Hill was an innocent delight but where were our local actors, was it necessary to have Judi Dench in the role of the grandmother? A lot of our theatre family are wondering why. Van Morrison stitched the whole thing together and it’s obvious you should play his music at full volume to get the best effect and it’s powerful. Lots of little things grated, the paving stones were ripped up for ammunition and replaced magically within weeks and the rubble disappeared thanks to a remarkably efficient city council! Nit picking isn’t necessary but to read that so many ‘enjoyed’ the film is strange, perhaps the profile of the viewer has something to do with it. Our audience were mostly of an age, men but mostly women some on their own, and asking them afterwards the opinion was ‘brings you back’ and walking on. Branagh did well with a huge subject and deserves praise. However, when you lived through those years you have a memory no one can take away and no one can replicate. That’s why today and the anniversary of Bloody Sunday is so special, the depth of despair is personal to each man, woman and child and the comfort of walking together with fellow sufferers who understand.
