(The Nationalist, November 2001. Also published in The Provincial Bulletin, No.4, 2001.)
I left the house in the evening to go for a walk to the top of the hill. It’s thirty minutes up and down, and it’s good exercise. Good for the heart, the doctors say.
The firecrackers have begun, even though there are several weeks to go to Hallowe’en. There are many different kinds, the ones which make a splitting, cracking sound when thrown at the footpath. There are the rockets, which start with a pop, followed by a whistle, and finally a loud bang, sometimes uncomfortably close. There are lots of them, and their sound is almost constant.
Further up the hill uprooted shrubs are scattered on the path. At the top of the hill I turn round and come back. A bus from the newly-begun service passes nearby. Stones hop off its sides, flung by children of about 9 to 15 years of age. The driver waits until he gets out of range, stops, shouts a few eff bees at them and drives on.
I go over to the children. They are sitting on a discarded sofa and armchairs beside a bus shelter with shattered glass. ‘Are you a priest?’ says one. Pretty quick, I think, as I’m wearing civvies. ‘I am’. ‘Do you know Brother Useless?’ [Eustace!] ‘Yes.’ ‘Where is he?’ ‘Donegal; I’m taking his place’. ‘What do you think of my chick? says one with a giggle talking about the girl sitting on his lap. ‘Don’t be talking like that; he’s a priest’, says another, shutting him up. I find it almost impossible to follow their conversation as they talk, sometimes all together, in short staccato bursts of words.
Nearby, one of their pals has a laser light which he – or it is she? – flashes, lighting them up with a small red spot which can damage the eye if it beams into it. We talk for a while and I bid them goodnight.
A little down the hill children are playing on the wreck of a car burned out by joyriders several days before. ‘I know you, you came to our school’, says the youngest, a girl in P2 (high infants). They run from the footpath onto the road, jump on the bonnet of the car, then onto the roof, then climb inside. I ask them to be careful not to cut themselves on the broken glass or ragged edges of metal. They take no notice, pulling bits and pieces from the car and playing with them. An older child lifts the smallest in his arms and jumps off the car roof with her. She runs over to me to complain about him, ‘He said the bad word – eff’. ‘Pretend you didn’t hear it’, I said.
I ask them about playing fields or a park. There aren’t any. ‘Youth clubs?’ None. I ask the oldest, who is thirteen and in second year of secondary, what subjects he’s studying. ‘Tests’, he replies. ‘Yes, but in what subjects? ‘We have to pass them’, he says.
Most of the children are small, still at primary school. Wait until they’re teenagers and then what?