The Birthday Boy

Tomorrow is a big day. For me, that is. It’s my birthday. …..(Five-minute pause while people fall around laughing, shout abuse, roll their eyes). I was fourteen before I knew the bands weren’t for me.

No, that’s a lie. Let me tell you, as Max Bygraves used to say, a lil story. I grew up on a farm that abutted on a 100% Protestant housing estate. We were a family of eight children and our relationship with the youngsters living across the fence went from indifferent to friendly. My sisters would have had good relations with some of the estate girls, who would occasionally come over and marvel at farm life. I had one friend in particular, a blond-haired lad of my own age with not a bad bone in his soft young body. He frequently crossed the barbed-wire fence and we would mooch about the fields, checking out rabbits, the river, cattle, doing super-jumps  among the hay-bales stored in our hayshed. And then the Twelfth of July would come.

In the week leading up to it, the number of cross-fence visitors would taper off into nothing. On the afternoon of my birthday, having consumed ice cream and jelly to mark the event, my sisters and I would go out to play. Then the thudding sound would begin. That’s the sound you get when you chuck big stones against a hays-shed. We would go to investigate. There, standing on a mound on the other side, would be the youngsters of the estate. They stopped throwing stones at the hay-shed and aimed them at us instead. “This is Sandy Row/Where the fenians never go!” they’d shout. (For years I thought Sandy Row was the mound of bare earth on which they stood). They’d add vivid details about the Pope’s sex life and we’d yell remarks about the queen’s knickers and peg  stones back at them. And in the middle of them,  looking as though he wanted to hide, was my friend. He’d shout with the others but it was half-hearted, almost shame-faced; and when he’d lob a stone it’d be with no real conviction. This would go on for an hour or so, until everyone’s arms got sore throwing or they ran out of insults or they decided they were going home for their tea.

Over the next week, they’d filter back. My sisters’ friends and eventually my blond pal, looking a little sheepish. We never mentioned the Twelfth – it was as if a week had been edited out of our lives. And we’d resume our farm-mooching.

The point of the story?  The Twelfth, even in its most innocuous form, is a force for division. It makes uneasy or hostile relationships that left to themselves would deepen in warmth and trust. Annually into our lives sectarianism appeared, naked and nasty. Not even the ice-cream and jelly made up for it.

An awful lot of years later, what’s new?