There was a great outpouring of love and respect for journalist and writer Nell McCafferty who died last week. She was 80 and she’d been ill, she left an amazing story of her life and her work. A proper feminist who championed rights of women and children and co-founded the Irish Woman’s Liberation Movement in 1970. I met her twice and there was no doubt of the charisma and power of this campaigner, she was forthright, funny and fearless. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood called her a mould breaker and establishment shaker, “she spoke truth to power like only a Derry woman could.” In her own words, Goodnight Sister.
Paralympics begin this week, relegated to Channel 4 and I’ve no doubt a much lesser audience to the razzmatazz of the able-bodied olympics. Well, I reckon these will be spectacular and well worth tuning into, bring it on.
What do you do if you hate your life, your name, your family – well most of them. Emmet McCrudden grew up in the small village of Carricktown surrounded by the Sperrin mountains, with 17 pubs and red faced farmers. The house was small, a plastic bucket for necessity when it’s too cold for the outside loo especially in the winter of 1963 the coldest to hit Co. Tyrone in 200 years and when the squares cut from the Mid Ulster Mail ran out, a cold dock leaf did the job. Emmit was one of eight children, a father who was a drunkard, whose wife ran away to England leaving her sons and daughters to cope for themselves. There was no money, no council houses, no jobs to be had. The Stormont government considered Emmet and his like ‘dirty, lazy, thieving Fenian gypsy bastards’ who didn’t deserve anything, Then, in August 1969 the day before his 14th birthday, the British army moved in.
For the young man it was difficult, he and his friend Mickey Peach were always getting up to no good and recruitment into the IRA beckoned. However, as a young teenager delivering Cantrell and Cochrane lemonade and paid £6.10 shillings a week, his post office savings book gradually filled until there was enough for a one way ticket from Larne to Stranraer and a new life and a new name, Tom Joad.
Compelling Story
In his book Tom Joad and Me, author Owen O’Neill has painted a vivid picture of this young man’s life and how, like O’Neill, Tom became a bricky in London, the people he met, the women he fell for, his first pint, his passionate love life and most disturbing of all, his journeys home and his brutal interrogation at airports. “This is not autobiographical although there’s is some truth there, the vicious treatment happened to a friend who told me the horror story when I visited him as he recovered in hospital. The characters are an amalgam of a number of friends and situations although I did break into Hammersmith police station to get to a girlfriend, I wasn’t wearing shoes and the sergeant on duty lent me a pair of boots which I returned in a brown paper bag next day, panic! They thought it was a bomb!”
Owen was born in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, one of 16 children, he now lives with his wife in London. After winning a BBC Radio 4 poetry competition he has completed three books of poems. He was a standup comic for nine years but now favours plays and has three on the go, a screen play about an old man taking his money out of the bank before the banking crash of 2008, locking it in a safe which later he and his son are unable to open. He’s also in the middle of a drama about a comedienne who can’t get work, buys a bus and takes tourists round Belfast making it up as she goes along, there’s always humour in Owen’s writing. The third project features the ongoing controversy in Co. Tyrone where a community is divided over the discovery of gold in the Spirran mountain.
Tom Joad and Me is published by Thirsty Books Edinburgh £16.99 and Owen O’Neill will be appearing at Aspects Festival Bangor in September. www.aspectsfestival.com
Although Stephen Way had been ill for some time it was a shock to hear of his death last Wednesday. He was devoted to his wife, Gloria Hunniford and he made no secret of his love for her. We met and talked on several occasions but one stands out more than the others. I was in London for an important luncheon in the Guild Hall. The day before I joined Gloria in her studio and sat in on her programme. I was going through chemotherapy treatment, feeling rotten and sporting a wig which I was told made me look like Rod Stewart! After the recording, in her dressing room, as was her style Gloria quizzed me about my health, all the details and we came round to the wig. By that time Stephen had joined us and she told me to take off the wig so she could see the regrowth of my hair. “Now Stephen, Anne has a very important luncheon tomorrow, what can you do with her new hair.” At once he invited me to his New Bond Street salon first thing in the morning where his best hairdresser worked her magic and I walked tall, back out into London and on to the event looking normal and feeling terrific. When I wanted to pay I was told it was Stephen’s treat. What a gentleman. My love and sympathy to Gloria and her sons and grandsons. Like so many others, a family experiencing heartbreak and sorrow.
THE WAY IT WAS
Things in America are hotting up, a race to the top. I came across this map which is interesting and sad as the Native American’s have been driven out of so much of their home land. The names conjure up thoughts of a proud nation – Choctaw, Cherokee, Comanche and Apache, where are they all now?
Hope to be with you next week as usual depending if I can get my account with the blog. provider sorted. I have the best man on the case so cross fingers.