From Andersonstown News, 2 January 2025
I HAVE the flu. It’s a sign of my loyalty to you, dear reader, that I write this column in my sick bed. Bathed in sweat. I can’t remember how many times I’ve changed my T-shirt. I ran out of paper hankies and turned to kitchen roll for nose-cleaning duties. The snatters are tripping me. I’ve changed my sheets as well. Three times. Everyone else is away so I phoned Richard.
“I should be so lucky,” he retorted. “Try a hot whiskey.”
“I still haven’t done my weekly column,” I told him.
“You have until Saturday,” he consoled me. “By the way, be careful you don’t have Covid.”
“I got my Covid injection,’ I replied.
“And your flu one also,” he countered.
That was true. Richard is usually the most helpful person I know, but he has had a few days off. He seems to have forgotten that we are friends. A friend in need is a friend indeed and all that. Or maybe he was just being contrary. I’ve noticed that a wee bit recently. So I ended our less than helpful call and hobbled into the bathroom to do my own Covid test.
A Covid test is a rather complicated process. Especially for someone as sick as me. But I persisted. Despite the challenging size of the very small print of the instructions – not helped by my short-sighted, tear-filled eyes – I eventually completed the rigorous poking up my nostrils with the cotton buddy thingymebob
Then the other intricate manoeuvres before checking the outcome after fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, I coughed and spluttered and sneezed and sweated my way back and forth to the bedroom. I had to keep reading the instructions to be sure what was negative and what was positive. Until eventually I got the all clear.
I don’t have Covid.
And I also don’t have a column. But I do have some deadly illness which has reduced me to a shivering, shaking, sweating blob of barely sustainable flesh. That’s when I remembered Richard’s suggestion of a hot whiskey. The journey to the kitchen was like my last descent from Errigal. Slow and panicky. Most hill walking and mountain climbing accidents happen on the way down. Ditto with stairs, I suppose. But the hot Jameson was worth it. It also got me out of bed. And the second one kept me up, so there is hope for the column being done on time.
Good old Richard. He knew what he was doing. So a happy New Year to him and to all of you. If I survive this affliction I will be forever indebted to hot whiskey. And Richard. Sláinte. Hic. Bliain úr faoi mhaise daoibh.
Gearóid has left a huge void
LOTS has already been written about Gearóid Ó Cairealláin. He was such a vital part of the Irish language community in West Belfast over so many years, and as someone I knew and greatly respected, I cannot allow his passing to go without a wee personal tribute.
His passing has left a deep void in the life of his family and also of the Irish language community in West Belfast and across the island of Ireland. Gearóid was an extraordinary human being who embraced life to its fullest. He was a writer, a musician, an actor, a playwright, a theatre director, a journalist and a visionary. He packed into his time with us an amazing amount of astonishing activism, most notably in his unrelenting promotion of the Irish language.
AISLING GHEAL: Bhain Gearóid Gradam na hAislinge i 2010
Gearóid had a boundless energy which even the terrible stroke that almost killed him in 2006 and left him in a wheelchair could not diminish. He was passionate about the Irish language. His determination to champion equality and parity for An Ghaeilge and for Gaeilgeoirí was widely recognised and applauded. He was part of that small and valiant group of activists who took a stand for Irish language and civil rights. Their list of accomplishments is long.
At a time when the British colonial office – the NIO – and government departments were actively discriminating against Irish speakers and denying funding to Bunscoil Phobal Feirste and the hundreds of children attending it, Gearóid refused to be intimidated and silenced. In 1981 he published Preas an Phobail. This was followed in August 1984 by the excellent daily Irish language newspaper Lá. He used his platforms to take a stand against the discriminatory policies of Belfast City Council highlighting the inequalities that confronted Gaeilgeoirí every day in Belfast City.
With others, Gearóid pioneered Coláiste Feirste, Aisling Ghéar and Cultúrlann Mac Adam-Ó Fiaich and Raidió Fáilte and between 1995 and 1998 he was the President of Conradh na Gaeilge. Gearóid was also an internationalist, especially in solidarity with the Palestinians. In 2001 along with Eoghan Ó Néill he travelled to South Africa and made a documentary for TG4 which included a meeting I had with Nelson Mandela.
There is a Belfast seanfhocal, ‘Ná habair é, déan é/Don’t talk about it, do it’, which in many ways reflects the very personal approach Gearóid brought to his activism. His standing as a Crann Taca of the Irish language community is evident in the many statements in praise of him following his death, including from An tUachtarán Michael D Higgins. I want to extend my solidarity and condolences to his wife Bríd and sons Ainle, Cairbre and Naoise, his mother Theresa and to Gearóid’s extended family circle and many, many friends.
The Mass in his honour in Saint Peter’s, where he was baptised, had mighty singers and musicians, all of them outstanding. Gráinne Holland’s Caoineadh Na dTrí Mhuíre captured the mood and Fr Brian Ó Fearraigh paid a wonderful tribute to Gearóid. No doubt this continued in An Chulturlann and will continue for as long as Gearóid’s name is mentioned.
Gaza carnage
WE begin the New Year as we ended the old one in the Middle East. The Israeli military – its ground forces and air force – continue their expansionist war in southern Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and in the Yemen.
In pursuit of its land grab, Israeli soldiers at the weekend forcibly invaded Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza and gave the staff 15 minutes to leave. Israeli forces then stripped the doctors, nurses and other medical staff and forced the semi-naked medics and gravely injured patients out into the cold and rubble-strewn streets.
There were 350 people in the hospital, including 180 medical workers and 75 wounded people. Many of the medics were taken away by the Israeli forces, their plight uncertain.
The weather in Gaza is very cold. At least four babies have died from hypothermia in recent days. Many hundreds of thousands of displaced families are now surviving in makeshift tents with no heating, little food and no warm clothes or blankets.
Last week the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNWRA, reported that a Palestinian child is killed in Gaza every hour. UNWRA said: “They are not just numbers; they are lives lost in a short time without any justification. Those who survive endure the trauma of displacement, are deprived of education and are left scavenging for food among the ruins of their homes.”
At the same time Israel continued its deliberate targeting of journalists killing five who were travelling in a clearly marked press vehicle in central Gaza. Their deaths bring to over 200 the number of journalists killed by Israel in the last 15 months.
2024 is at an end but Israeli aggression in the Middle East and in particular its genocidal policy in Gaza, is unlikely to end unless those western states which back it – the USA, Britain, Germany, France and others within the EU – refuse to send weapons and bombs and chose instead to impose sanctions.
