Our journey?

Rosie, my sister Gill and myself have received an invitation to an event to be held in the Irish Wheelchair Association headquarters at Corlurgan, on May 28^th. This is a play about disabled people and starring disabled people from Co. Cavan. It is a most worthy project and I wish it the greatest success to those taking part.

 There are a number of aspects that trouble me however. First, as far as I can discern, the play has not been written by disabled people, but by an able-bodied dramatist, maybe commissioned by Cavan County Council’s Arts Office. There seems to be the implication here that disabled people’s thoughts are too raw and coarse to be consumed by the general, able-bodied public, and have to be interpreted by someone else. Is it about disabled people’s journeys but in the words of the able-bodied? Apart from those unfortunate enough to suffer from aphasia or any other condition that causes loss of speech, all the disabled people I know (including myself) can speak very well and clearly.

 Bound up with this may be the assumption that disabled people wouldn’t be able to formulate their thoughts intelligently, let alone write a play.

 As I have a prior engagement I won’t be able to attend. This should not be seen as a snub by me towards those taking part in the play, who have my boundless respect and admiration. Unfortunately I feel I know what is going to happen. The event will be turned into a photo opportunity. My good friend Brian Mulligan will be on hand to take the pictures of the disabled who will be lined up for the shot. They will thus appear as nice, well-behaved and non-threatening cripples. This will then appear in the pages of the Anglo-Celt as exhibits in the ego-trips of those able-bodied people who want to appear caring. It might be said that the disabled are therefore being cynically used.  Bridget Boyle will be there of course, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t have her friend Whacko Jacko Keys there. Bridget enjoys the privileged position of being the only disabled person he deigns to communicate with.  Another sure show will be the chairman of the County Council, Winston Bennett, who will play the role of the self-important courthouse jester by wearing a silly chain round his neck. (Now men who wear jewellery are often ridiculed and called names like “trannies”. What’s more the only people I know who are called Winston are from the West Indies.)

 The drama has been assisted by Cavan County Council’s Arts Office. I used to enjoy very close relations with the office’s staff but I seem to have dropped out of their orbit. I cannot understand why the Arts Officer, my dear (or at least I though dear) friend Catriona O’Reilly never told me about this project. No doubt it would have been inappropriate for her to have contacts with me. How could she own up to being the friend of someone who has said such dreadful things about poor Brendan Snott and his neurotic predecessor in the Ballyjamesduff County vomitarium? She could have contacted me by ‘phone while out walking were she afraid that contact me through her office would be overheard.

 I cannot second-guess the play’s contents, but I do hope that it is realistic and not a dire panegyric singing the praises of the Irish Wheelchair Association or telling of Cavan’s disabled community’s gratitude to Cavan County Council for putting them on the housing waiting list – and keeping them there – where they know that any criticism of the council’s policies will earn them backward movement on the said list. Funny thing is that I don’t think there are that many houses being built, but no doubt the council will restart their construction once they get some of the 25 million euro they’re owed by developers.)

 Now I am confined to a wheelchair, although thankfully I can walk for about half a mile each day. The play is called Our Journey, but I don’t feel it’s my journey, as nobody ever contacted me for my input. This is not prompted by churlish resentment. I do believe that my story, which is not superior to anyone else’s, might be of interest. It is certainly of no lesser value, but it seems that some of those behind this project just don’t want to hear it. They may think that it would be too embarrassing and too likely to offend “certain people”. Yet my disabled journey is a joyful story. I see my disabilities as gifts from God; they are challenges which have been given to me and which I see myself as having a duty to overcome as best I can. I know that there would be many who would bristle with discomfort were I to say the unutterable, that I am actually proud of my disabilities and how I continue to deal with them on a daily basis.

 But it seems as if there are some in Cavan who want to ignore me. The great lie is spread that I am angry.  I am portrayed as someone who has never accepted my position as a cripple, one of God’s accursed. My outlook is heretical, because I do not humbly accept my disabilities as the actions of a wrathful God, (and it goes without saying that the people who think this know God well). What is more I refuse to come to terms with the “fact” that no mater how many books I write or languages I learn I can nevcr, never be as good as the laziest and most incompetent able-bodied person.

 I am therefore not worthy of charity, (not that I want it), or kindness. The nun who used to wipe clean the blackboard when she would see me attempting to discern what she had written, and who forbade any of my classmates to give me their notes, was thus justified because I had stood up to her tyranny. I haven’t changed. In the past I have offended the petty local establishment and thumbed my nose at organisations like the knights of St Columbanus. Did I not go to a Protestant school and refuse to kiss Bishop McKiernan’s ring? I must therefore be punished by being airbrushed out of Cavan’s reality like someone who doesn’t exist, never has and never will.

 Let me repeat that I wish the event all the very best luck. At least I was invited. In the past Tess Kennedy of the Irish MS Society, which has close links to the IWA, has invited me to give talks on local history and other subjects to members in St Christopher’s, and I hope that those who attended enjoyed themselves and found the experience as instructive and rewarding as I did. This action stands in marked contrast to that of the National Council for the Blind in Cavan. Now both Tess and Bridget Boyle knew of my skills and abilities, and both of them were well aware of my contributions to the sadly defunct Cavan Echo. They have never been afraid to count me as a friend and indeed an equal.

 No doubt Dr Snott, so long employed by Cavan County Council and taken to their collective heart, thought that he was a real clever boy when he accepted the invitation to speak from the NCBI on a topic that I had worked on for over two decades. The apposite adjective for him is, I believe unprintable even on my blog.

Talk on Cavan’s friary

The National Council for the Blind in Ireland (NCBI) which claims to represent the interests of the bind and partially sighted in Ireland has organised a meeting for next Thursday. The “Special guest” will be Dr Brendan Scott who will talk about the Franciscan Friary in Cavan.

 Brendan Scott is the same person who organised a conference on the medieval and early modern history of Cavan to which were invited specialists from as far away as the UK and America, though an expert who resided in Cavan, namely myself, was not invited. This was a deliberate snub, motivated by Dr Scott’s perception that there had been “trouble” between me and the museum, though it had been before his time.

 Some months earlier Dr Scott had unsuccessfully sought to replace me as a contributor to the Cavan Echo. I think it is obvious that Dr Scott has same issues regarding me. Though I’m damned if I know what they are as I’ve never even met him.

 This is the person the NCBI has invited as a special guest. Now it is bad enough that the NCBI does sweet FA to promote the interests of the blind, but quite another when they are siding with those who attack them. The invitation has cleared Dr Scott at a stroke of any accusation of discriminating against a partially sighted and disabled scholar. How could he have done such a thing he can say, when the National Council for the Blind itself invites him as a special guest – and in clear preference to the person whom he discriminated against.

 I am reproducing here an article I wrote for the Cavan Echo about Cavan’s Franciscan Friary, that I wrote in October 2007. But how silly and impudent of me to make such a claim when it is obvious I never wrote this at all. I have merely dreamed that I have written this, when in fact my hand and brain were in fact being directed by my double Dr Brendan Scott. It’s copyrighted. It was Francis Bacon who said “Opportunity makes the thief.”

 Given my expertise on the areas I have offered to give the talk instead, based on my own material, but the NCBI has responded to my offer with deafening silence. No doubt they are part of the voluntary sector in Cavan who are captives of the County Council, their members cowed into silence and acquiescence of discrimination by the promise of council grouses. While Whacko Jack presents himself as a guardian of disabled rights as he poses with yet another group of expensive, external consultants.

 By the way Brendan, does it make yo0u feel big and macho to pick on a disabled person and to steal from a cripple? You’ll have no luck you miserable bastard.

 Cavan’s Franciscan Friary

 Cavan Echo, October 19^th 2007

 

With the break-neck level of building development in Cavan town it can often seem as if the oldest surviving structure is a post-box or a petrol-tank. This accolade belongs however to the tower of the Franciscan Friary in the town’s Abbey Street, formerly known as Church Lane.

 Founding father

 The foundation of the friary, for monks from the Franciscan order or Ordo Fratrum Minorum (OFM) was the first surviving reference to Cavan in any of the surviving annals. The person who founded the friary was the recently-installed chieftain of East Breifne, Giolla Iosa ruadh O’Reilly, who more than anyone helped to re-establish the power of his family after the debacle of Magh Slecht half a century earlier which had seen the death of his father, grandfather, half-brother and many other relatives.

 Poorest of the poor

 The Franciscan order had been founded by St Francis in Italy in 1209. Their members were dedicated to rigorous and absolute poverty. At first they renounced even the principle of holding property in common. They spread like wild-fire throughout Europe, even reaching remote parts of Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia within a century of their foundation.

 The Franciscans had been particularly successful in urban areas, so their success in the north of Ireland, which was still devoid of towns, was unusual. The first monks may have come from Dundalk or Drogheda, or from friaries elsewhere in Ulster, such as Downpatrick and Carrickfergus. These were under the control of the Anglo-Norman earl of Ulster Richard de Burgh. The earl was generally on friendly terms with Giolla Iosa, who named one of his sons Risteard after him.

 Nothing survives today from this foundation. An eighteenth-century antiquary wrote that Giolla Iosa built a chapel and marble mausoleum at the friary. This might have been too ostentatious for the friars though who were wedded to simplicity in all aspects of life.

 Arson around

 Many of the buildings were of wood. In 1452 much of the abbey was destroyed in a fire caused by a careless monk called O Mothlain who was reading his breviary by candle-light, although The Annals of Ulster infer that he had partaken too freely of wine. In May 1575 the friary, with much of the town of Cavan went up in flames, though on this occasion a highly-placed arsonist was to blame. The wife of the then ruler of Erfast Breifne, Aodh Conallach, had a grudge against one of the residents of Cavan and set fire to their house. Alas for the town and the friary the flames spread. .

 Old peoples’ home with a difference

 The friary soon developed a rather non-religious aspect closely linked to the ruling house; it became a strange mixture of a retirement home and political refuge. Fifteen years after its foundation Giolla Iosa gave up the reins of power to become a monk in the friary where he died and was buried in 1330. His son Cu Chonnacht (whose descendants eventually settled in the Munterconnaght area of Co. Cavan) also retired there to die in 1366. His time at the top had been marked by tension with his brother Pilip, and Cu Chonnacht’s act of renunciation of the world may have been all the sweeter because he knew the friary afforded the right of sanctuary to all who lived there.

 The old order changes

 For many years a mistaken belief was held by some historians that the friary had been founded not by Franciscans, but by their brother mendicants the Dominicans or Ordo Praedicatorum (OP) There was a change in the rule followed by the monks in 1503 when the then ruler of East Breifne, Sean Mac Cathail O’Reilly, successfully petitioned the Papacy for the friary to change from the mainstream conventual branch of the Franciscans towards the much more rigorous and fundamentalist Observantines, which had been founded in Italy in 1368. but which was sweeping all before it in Ireland.

 A bishop’s residence

 The friary was important in the local secular church, to which in theory it did not belong. The last bishop of the diocese of Tir Bruin before it changed its name to that of Kilmore, was one Donat O Gabhain, and in the 1430s the Franciscan friary was his residence.

 A falling off

 It is probable that, like many other religious institutions in sixteenth-century Ireland it suffered from a falling-off of membership and religious discipline. It seems to have survived the various troubles of the sixteenth century intact. Nettercliff’s map of Cavan town c. 1590 shows a plain rectangular building with a tower on the site of the present tower,

 Kindly move aside

 With the extinction of O Raghailigh power and the advent of English rule this church was pressed into use as a place of Protestant Divine service. During the upheavals of the middle of the century it changed back to being a church of Catholic worship, only to be once more seized by the conflict’s victors for their religious uses.

 A final resting place

 Before this it had, according to tradition, served as the burial place of Eoghan ruadh O Neill, the military leader of the rebellion in Ulster, following his death at Clough Oughter in November 1649. Other traditions in the Clough Oughter area dispute this though. It had certainly been a place of burial for the O’Reilly chieftains throughout the later middle Ages. The late Philip O’Connell recounted another tradition of the unearthing of stone-lined coffins during repaving work in the nineteenth century.

 Going out for a slash

 Some antiquaries also testify to the survival of a tombstone belonging to the legendary Myles the Slasher, but as “Myles” did not die at the Bridge of Finea but passed away in France such a monument must have been a figment of their imagination.

 Continuation

 The church continued to be used as Cavan’s parish church throughout the eighteenth century. The monastery was knocked down and its materials used for the construction of a barracks for horses nearby.  The surviving tower possibly dates from the eighteenth century. The grounds were used as a cemetery until the late nineteenth century; amongst those buried there were the first barons arnham.   

The end of the road

It was obviously too small of a building to act as Cavan’s Parish Church. In 1807 work began on a new structure on land donated by the Farnhams. Construction was delayed by the ongoing Napoleonic wars but by November 1815 sufficient buildings had been completed to allow the first services to be held there, thus condemning the structure in Abbey Street to obsolescence; one of the last services held there took place on Christmas Day 1815.

While still used for burials the site soon became overgrown, a condition only recently reversed.  The inside of the tower itself was used as a dumping ground and alfresco public convenience. Some of the original wooden structures of the church survived until the 1880s, for in December 1888 the Anglo-Celt recorded a fire on the site, which by then had attained the importance of a sanctuary as the burial place of “Owen Roe”.

© Ciaran Parker 2007

I have since learned from among others Dr Eamon McDwyer of a long-current tradition that Eoghan ruadh O Neill was buried in 1649 at a site on the Bridge Street side of the abbey.

The end of the Cavan Echo

It was with immense sadness that I learned of the closure of the Cavan Echo. This will be looked back upon by future generations as a brave and courageous venture in Cavan journalism. The Cavan Echo showed a new way in local journalism, one which demonstrated that “local” need not mean parochial or sub=standard when compared with journalism at a national level.

 I am eternally grateful to Declan Young for asking me to get involved, and through my contributions I had the joy of working with great editors like P.J., Michael and Ian, as well as making the friendship of Mairtin and Deborah in Belfast.

 Innumerable are the friends I have made through my column. It was as if I discovered a whole new reservoir of colleagues, of whose previous existence I could only dream. Many enjoyed my Echoes of the Past, and their joy was matched by mine in writing them. I felt that I was able to rescue history from the clutches of shortsighted and self-interested “historians” and give it back to its rightful owners, the ordinary people of Cavan whose ancestors had lived through it and made it in the first place.

 I am planning to bring out a book containing a selection of my Echo pieces. However, I have no intention of writing any more Echoes. The concept and format must die with the paper I feel.

 The Cavan Echo’s demise was due to the downturn in the economy. It is ironic in this country which pays such lip service to the principals of the free market that private-sector institutions have been allowed to go onto the rocks un-mourned, while certain others associated especially with local government continue to receive a seemingly inexhaustible supply of public funds which are in such short supply that even the widow’s mite is now under threat. I am thinking here especially of that bloated, superannuated white elephant in Ballyjamesduff, which remains open even though it has never made any money, and continues to resolutely haemorrhages it, while council staff members are let go because of a lack of funds to pay them.

 After I departed from the Echo I mentioned my plight to a friend who has good contacts with a much longer established local newspaper here. He made enquiries on my behalf as to whether they might like to benefit from my availability by employing me. While senior members of staff promised to contact us they never did. They passed over the possibility of explaining to me that they too were in financial straits and were thus prevented from taking me on. But it seemed as if they could not lower themselves to do this. Were they afraid that a hand would emerge from the telephone?  But even if they were cash rich, how could they employ me? What would their masters in Cavan County Council say? The knights would be appalled. It seemed as if my copy, freely given to them (if for a fee) was not as tasty as stealing my words and applying a staff member’s (though now thankfully retired) by-line to them.  A short ‘phone call would have helped to establish contact and trust. Instead I had to make do with a visit from the sniggering, bad-minded racist who informed me that I might think I was bad, but longer-established i.e. better columnists had been let go by the local newspaper. Needless to say he bellyached about how little the paper was paying him for photographs –something he no doubt put down to foreigners.

 The upshot of the above is: You had your chance Anglo-Celt, but the Echoes of the Past are dead like the Monty Python parrot.

No joke

A few weeks’ ago I made a humorous post to my blog entitled “Is Cavan County Museum worth a mass?” This spoof informed my readers that that supe-annuated white elephant in Ballyjamesduff was about to fall victim to the economic downturn. Anyone with a titter of wit could see that it was not to be taken seriously, but I obviously hit a nerve and there were not a few who believed it. So much so that the imminent closure of the museum featured on local radio and in the local press; the local authority was forced to issue a statement denying any intention to close it.

Pardon me for being a litte ego-centric but the Cavan Echo has recently dccided to discontinue my column “Echoes of the Past”. Many people both in Cavan and further afield enjoyed this, and I certainly enjoyed writing it, and  I am really touched by the messages of regret and support I have received. This is  not a joke. I am conscious however that this development, which I see as having a far more detrimental impact on historical studies in Cavan than the closure of the museum, has not produced anything like the outrage occasioned by my spoof.  No! I am not expecting people to ‘phone up Northetrn Sound or write letters of protest.  I do know that many of the museum’s biggest friends and defenders will be only too glad that I am no longer writing about history – that loud mouth badmouthing his betters and those whom God has placed abovce him could have no better luck – they are no doubt saying to themselves.

No Show in the Echo

I feel I owe an explanation to my many readers for the non appearance of a piece by me in the Cavan Echo. It’s not my fault.

 Last Monday I got a message from the Belfast Media Group telling me that the Cavan Echo was switching to a 28 page format. As a result contributors including myself, Breifne O’Reilly and Stephen were being given “a holiday”, and that contributions weren’t being sought from us until “the end of summer” – whenver that is. As the frogs say On verra bien.

 I’m not holding my breath that my “Ecfhoes of the Past” will resume anytime soon, and I’m highly doubtful it would be in the Cavan Echo.

 This will cause many people disappointment. I think it was apparent that I really loved writing my pieces, andf this was enhanced by the feedback I got.

 I pray that I may be given an opportunity to continue publishing my scribblings some time soon.

PS. I may be a rat but I stayed with the ship until the end.

 

Ah sure ya might as well – the County Council elections

I read in a recent edition of the Cavan Echo that the HSE (add an IT to it and you get what they are) have reduced the expenses payable to psychiatric nurses and support workers in the community. This is but one more example of the cowardly actions of a bankrupt government, which is actually pursuing a mild form of Nazism through its actions.

Have the expenses which county councillors pay themselves for attending useless junkets been reduced? I somehow feel the actions of a qualified and experienced health professional are more important than the wasteful and self-aggrandizing crap they get up to.

But these are the very scum who are coming around asking us for our votes. No wonder some aspirants want to get onto the bandwagon, Personally, I wouldn’t let any of them round the house. Who’s to say they’re not casing the joint?

In the last local elections I cast a blank ballot for the county council. I was going to spoil it by drawing phallic iconography on the back, or maybe applying labels to some of the “rabbit-in-the-headlights” mug-shots, with pithy yet pertinent legends like “wanker”, “trick”, “bastard”, “thunderin’ eegit”” etc. but I couldn’t be bothered. I’ll probably do the same this time too. Now there are one or two candidates standing who are not turds, whom I like and genuinely respect, but that’s just it. I cannot consign someone I respect to the role of a runner, a mere go-between between the public and an incompetent, arrogant, unaccountable, incompetent and probably corrupt county council executive.

I would like to give a plug to my good friend and fellow bon viveur Anthony P. Vesey. Alas I don’t have a vote in his electoral area but I hope he does well and really gives it up the arse to the blueshirts.

(No doubt there will be some gobsh … readers who will be offended by what I’ve written above. Yippee!!!! While others will have to have it read out to them or repeated third hand before they get offended. I’m sorry but I do not see the value of giving the name of a pearl to a turd.

Cavan town’s hall of shame

Cavan Town Council have established an exhibition to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the construction of the Town Hall, which didn’t open until January 1910. It goes without saying that I wasn’t invited, but then as the semi-literate jackass was going to be in attendance I wouldn’t have gone anyway. But I was in good company, for while the usual suspects (the councillors, the town clerk and the county manager) were invited, the plebs, the hoi poloi (that’s your actual Greek that is), the fuckers and whingers of the electorate were not.

The people of Cavan should reflect on this and bear it in mind when these people come fawning on them looking for their votes in the coming elections, like second-hand double-glazing salesmen or Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Who am I to expect an invitation? Well, I wrote a booklet about the council ten years’ ago. But then maybe the town council and councillors didn’t know about it. They should do – they asked me to write it. Then I wrote an article for the Cavan Echo about the building of the town hall. At least one man, who is in possession of a trowel used on the original construction, gate-crashed the event.

And then of course there was an item on RTE’s Nationwide program. I’ve been on that three times – and never got paid once. If they wanted somebody who knew what he was talking about, and could do it in an entertaining and light-hearted way, they could have asked me, but then a Tim O’Leary wannabe in a wheel-chair wouldn’t set the right tone would he? Were they afraid that I might be indiscrete? That I might make a pass at the gorgeous Mary Kennedy? I might have referred to the story long current round the town about the sumptuous “Town Hall Ball” held at its opening, when, according to some wags the food was so rich that some of the Cavan lads were still on the jacks at the outbreak of World War 1! Maybe they were afraid that I might mention the opposition on the council in the early years of the twentieth century to the building of the town hall on land donated by Lord Farnham, and how this could be interpreted as placing the council and its members fairly and squarely in the pockets of the landed aristocracy. But they didn’t stay there for long, for it was not rebelliousness against the injustice of the landlord system that prompted the council to use the then Lord Farnham’s land for the celebrations accompanying the return of the victorious 1947 team to Cavan without his permission. No, it was just plain bad manners.

If only I had known about the exhibition on Tuesday evening when my house in Cavan was visited by the first cock-suc…. council candidate, an out-going member. As it happened I hardly bade “it” the time of day, being somewhat appalled by its unctuous manner. Fool that I am I regretted my brusqueness. I might consider it a form of pond-life but I thought it had a grudging respect for me. Then I heard about the exhibition launch and the Nationwide feature, and I came to the conclusion that he doesn’t respect me, so all bets are off. I find “its” actions insulting and disreputable. It is seeking the electoral support of the people of Cavan, a lot of whom are facing financial difficulties and unemployment. What’s does “it” say? No doubt crocodile tears and sympathy, while arranging for one of “its” nephews to be taken on “temporarily” as a council employee – and like military juntas of old “temporary” can become permanent. The lad is very able ad well qualified, but when it comes to employment with organs of local government in Cavan (and no doubt throughout the rest of the country) the only qualification that matters is a familial relationship with a council member.

So here’s a message for all out-going members of Cavan Town Council who are seeking re-election, regardless of political affiliation. Don’t’ come near me or any member of my family. (I hope Councillor Conaty who has long been a good friend of ours respects what I’m saying), but as for the rest – they are worthless, self-aggrandising scum, a human form of algae.

A

The local press

I never read local newspapers. In fact a local newspaper has to be at least seventy five years’ old before it’s of any interest to me.

Very occasionally, I flick through them, and then feel nauseous for about a week.

 

I just have to ask some people in Cavan: Do you never get tired of seeing your photographs in the local press?

 Let’s face it, none of you are exactly goodlooking. Admittedly, there was a time when some of you might have been considered blossoms of pulchritude,

 – but the passage of time accompanied by the inevitable bodily metal fatigue is showing its inevitable effects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early modern musings – Inti bold?

Readers of my little scribblings in The Echo will see the first part of my story about the life and death of Pilip dubh O Raghallaigh. There will be some “early modernists” – those claiming to be experts on sixteenth and seventeenth century history – who will bristle with indignation that their “patch” has been invaded by a mere late medieval ignoramus. “Isn’t he ashamed? His father isn’t even a town councillor.” But then Fortune favours the bold, if not the bald.

Regrets

 

I wish I weren’t disabled. I think back to the days when I could walk for miles or strut my stuff on the dance-floors of smelly, over-heated nightclubs.. I wish I could recognise people’s faces.

 

But you know I don’t think I’ve done too badly.

 

Regrets? Sure! I’ve got a few – who hasn’t? I regret having stayed on at university to get a doctorate. I also regret coming back down to Cavan in 1995 and getting in with a bad crowd, though as they were my employers I could hardly help it. But as we haven’t mastered time travel and going back in time, regrets are stupid.

 

Some may think I’m angry – surely none but a person steeped deeply in anger could write such forceful denunciations of the bandits and thieves who think of themselves as our leaders.

 

But I’m sorry to disappoint. I’m not angry, certainly not with my disabilities. Who should I be angry with? God? I’ve never been a believer in a vengeful and wrathful deity delivering his displeasure by life-shattering thunderbolts. I see divine intervention in my life as far more benign. God could have made me less imperfect, but the reasons he didn’t have nothing to do with punishment. If anything they are challenges for me to overcome – on my terms, not on someone else’s.

 

Maybe it’s a cross to bear, but then this makes me feel immensely privileged. Maybe Jesus is giving me the opportunity to carry his cross and share in his sufferings for mankind. I think it was Edith Stein who wrote: “Sufferings endured with the Lord are his sufferings.” But listen – I’m no Jesus freak and I wouldn’t like the powerful holy joes to feel they had competition.

 

But I’m not the only one who’s privileged here. I have never believed that there is a hierarchy of illness – that I’m sicker than someone else, and therefore deserving more soup and sympathy.

 

I don’t feel angry or resentful of “able-bodied” people. We’re all members of the human race, Some people are just luckier, that’s all.

 

I do feel angry – very angry – at the responses of society and government to the disabled. They claim they want disabled people to feel included and to pursue the removal of discrimination. In fact they don’t give a damn – they never have done. What they give (or rather promise) with one hand they take back with blooded claw on the other. I am incandescent at being sidelined, looked down upon and discriminated against by shitty little people leading shitty little lives who think that their proximity to bodily perfection places them in positions of unassailable authority over me and countless others.

 

I am livid with being expected to blend into the wall-paper of society, and then being ostracised because I have never wanted to be imprisoned in the world of low (or no) expectations. Along with other disabled people I have so much to give to the world, but we have been told by many (including many of the voluntary organizations supposedly pursuing our welfare) that the highest occupations we can aspire to are telephone operators. I dare to say that not everything in the garden of disability (only partially accessible to people in wheelchairs) smells of roses, but that quite a lot stinks of human piss.

 

Amongst the most craven in our world are those who preen themselves as being friendly to the disabled, who initiate expensive schemes accompanied by lavish publicity, to investigate the needs of the disabled, but which never lead to anything except the short-term enrichment of their organisers.

 

God gave me a brain, which he expects, nay demands I use. He also gave me the means of expressing my thoughts and I am so thankful to be able still to use them.

 

I am really, really happy. I live with a beautiful woman, safe and secure in her love, in a beautiful spot. I have so many truly wonderful friends.

 

Sometimes I wonder what I’ve done to deserve such happiness. At other times I fear that my happiness consists of fibres of a rug which can all too easily be precipitously withdrawn. I know how fragile my happiness is and how it can so easily be destroyed by the bloody-minded actions of others. I have made many enemies among the “powerful” who are just itching to get back at me.

 

I have my dignity; this is very precious.

 

But you know life is for loving. I believe in the present and the future. The past can take care of itself.

 

But I don’t know why I’ve written this. There will be those who’ll understand. Others will just scoff, maybe seeing it as the belly-aching of an arse-hole, as I was once described by a fellow member of an online forum for the partially-sighted.