Angel in the shuck

She had nothing to speak of
no money, no profession, no property
She kept chickens and always wore wellingtons
Her hair an untamed bush under a crocheted hat
Her skin creased like the folds of an accordion
sun blasted into brown granite
her language a quaint country lilt
Her wrinkles form permanent smile
lines around eyes and mouth
beaming her well meaning at the world
while shooing the chickens from
under her feet in shit splashed boots
You'd mention some old rogue
from the council, corrupt and foul
and her response was ever
"What a lovely man!"
She had no badness to say about anyone
Only good things to appreciate and praise
I once fell in the deep ditch beside her road
She ran throwing her bucket aside
chickens running in all directions
screeching their distress
with her spade hands and peat tipped nails
she hauled me out
smiling at me, the world and her chickens
As a child, I remember thinking
I'd found an angel in the shuck

Note the meaning of shuck - Northern Ireland slang, meaning 

1: a ditch at the side of the road that contains a small stream normally laced with cow shit

Dad - A Real Teacher

Was talking on Skype to my uncle in New Zealand and the topic of my dad came up.  It has been over nine years since he died but he is alive in memories and conversations with loved ones.  My uncle reminded me of a holiday in Cranfield when he was just a boy and my father took him with others to examine a bag of cigarettes washed up on the shore.  My father told them all that there was a chance that people were on the look out with guns for this smuggled hoard so their race to the beach was filled with danger.  My uncle remembers the excitement and thrill of the escapade and how Dad turned the whole affair into a huge adventure for them all.  

My brother remembers how one night when he went round to my Dad’s school in Dungiven and in the darkness opened the front door and went down a long corridor.  Empty school corridors at night are spooky, you almost hear the voices of non-existent pupils echoing from classrooms over the squeak of your shoes on the shiny tiles.  Suddenly, at the end of the corridor in the darkest part someone opened fire with a gun and my brother ran for his life while the flashes of gunfire lit up the corridor.  It was of course my dad who had let fire with a sports starting pistol to see what my brother would do.  

It was never boring with my dad around.  He could make every event into an adventure and fun.  Even a walk in the fields turned into a geological field trip, or a visit to a castle, a lesson on history.  Always informing and educating he could not stop probing your intellect pushing you to find out and want more.

In Dungiven in the 1970s there was a divide between Catholics and Protestants and yet he was a voice of reason even then.  It was not popular and I was struck by how ahead of his time, in so many ways, he was.  In the tiny secondary school in the Sperrins he taught children about Geography so well that all could identify every country on a world map.  The only test was who was the fastest as they raced to the board and labelled the world map drawn there. He loved world maps and bought the biggest and best he could.  I get flashbacks every time I talk on skype with my son and see over his shoulder a huge world map on his wall.  This desire for maps must be genetic!  He also taught the children high in the Sperrins isolated from even NI about all the world religions Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Baha'i, Christianity, Judaism etc Even now forty years later our religious education has not caught up with his wide ranging insights on world religions.

My son found a newspaper article (from over thirty years ago) in which my Dad speaks of his educational philosophy and it resonates still, even fifty years after he practised it in Canada, Australia and Northern Ireland.  It gives me a fragrance of this lovely man who chose the path less travelled.  Here are two excerpts in his own words.

“A relatively small number of teachers of the right calibre could create a school society in which pupils could progress to greater awareness of the world about them, their cultural heritage and a knowledge of their real selves.  Unfortunately, the false values of contemporary society have been allowed to dictate priorities in education.”

“For me the ideal person is the man from Nazareth who lived in a society very much like our own and Who in the midst of all that hatred could say: ‘Love your enemies and do good to those that hate you.’  One thing for sure is He did not learn that from the teacher in the synagogue school.”