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The Mechanism. (Or The Basket Case. Part One.)
By Randall Stephen Hall. 23.1.15.
When I was growing up I didn’t know any of my story, my back story, my past, the context in which I found myself, (in which we all find ourselves). It was to be explained by osmosis, by guess work, by random snatches of conversations, overheard from my parents, my relations and my friends.
This shaping of identity must be a common experience for us all. Picking up bits of this and bits of that as we grow.
As a wee baby, I was dropped into this situation. My parents, in a generic sense, were both Protestants. Both Presbyterians, in fact. A very different thing from being just a Protestant. But of course, as a little creature who could not talk, who was totally reliant on my parents for everything, it didn’t really matter what I was. For at the end of the day, what was I ?
I was just a baby. Like a brand new page from a new sketch pad. Un-blemished. Not one line, daub or finger mark upon me. I had no sense of identity. I was not genetically Protestant. My DNA didn’t make me Protestant any more than the distance between my eyes being an indicator of my Protestant birth right. (Though, they are fairly close.)
I was just me. Just me with my white freckly skin. Just me in the way I burped and reached out my arms to the world. As far as I remember, at the time, I was not a “Taig hater” as Tadgh or MacTeague had no meaning for me yet.
So there I was. Born at Ardenlee nursing home, just behind the Good Doctor’s Spirit Shop, on the Ravenhill Road in 1957. In a city full of smog, pollution, heavy smokers, flat caps and knowing your place. It was important to know who you were and who you weren’t. Is that true today, or is it just a new re-imagining of the old? Us and them. It hasn’t gone away you know.
Like it or not, baby, youth or adult, I still got branded a “PROD”. Under the blanket. Under the blanket of this four letter word (no pun intended . . . “aye right, big lad.”). Just sucking my thumb and watching the world go by. Unknown to me, me and my Moses basket were being slowly fed into a huge and hungry mechanism. But before I could reach it I must point out that I was being carried there by a number of people . . . A Presbyterian minister, a number of MPs, the Civil Service, the state education system, the Health system, the Public Record Office, the City Hall and a number of other public bodies. All carrying me and my wee basket, up above their heads. Almost a parade! Walking behind me was a Catholic Priest and the Catholic Education system as they wanted no part of me. (Too hard to digest.) That’s okay I’m not offended. After all, it was 1957 in old cold Nornia.
The mechanism to which I was being taken to looked like a cross between Stormont, a factory, the Titanic and the ghost train at Barry’s in Portrush. All combined. I was taken round the back and left on the steps. From there I was lifted with Asbestos gloves (all the rage in those days, especially in schools), and left to be weighed, and tagged (LEFT or RIGHT). As a wee Prod I was taken to the “RIGHT” room (the room on the right), and left in a gigantic cot, with several other thousand wee dotes from the day I was born. All “RIGHT” and Protestant, but in a sense, all wrong. Off to a bad start. A start from which many of us never recover.
Down a corridor my doppleganger “Ragnall Stiofán MacHalla”, a wee Catholic, equally white and freckly, was on his way to the LEFT room, (the room on the left), to crawl in amongst his Gaelic brothers and sisters. Sucking on the teet of mother Ireland with Sian O’Riada tunes getting his wee left foot tappin’ nicely. (Ah now . . .)
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