I'm gonna start this page with the story of John. That's his real name but I forget the rest.Finnigan perhaps
I've been many things over much time and once upon a time I was a student in London. I had lots of friends. I had two friends called John Yes Finnigan and Meyler.
They were from Northern Ireland. I wanna say something else about the state of my mind as a country boy at that time. Where I lived, S.L.O.S.H. - tell me it's still there, South London Overseas Student Hostels in Wimbledon - I had some other friends and one of them was called Mal.
And I went away and I came back and I asked my bestest friend - Keith - Oh is malcolm still here? Puzzlement followed by derision. Er., Malachy has gone.
I can tell you something else about Mal.He was raised in the second most northerly house on the Island of Ireland but he was raised in Eire. Northern Ireland is the North EAST corner of Ireland and bits of it are further north than any of Ulster.
So my Johns. Both from Northern Ireland, one Roman Catholic and one protestant.
So I asks the Protestant John Why are so many of the people on this course from Northern Ireland and he says. Well it's getting to be a very different place over there. My brother's a police officer and these days he has to stand in line with everybody else - even when he's in uniform.