TODAY/YESTERDAY/TOMORROW?

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My last contact with a "graphic narrative", or the nearest thing in those days, the "graphic novel", would have been in the 1950s/60s when some of the acknowledged classics like Sir Walter Scott's novels were rendered comic-cut style for children. As an adult, it is not a medium that appeals to me.

Or should I say "appealed" to me?

So what changed my mind?

Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza.

While he was doing research in Gaza in 2001, Sacco first came across stories about massacres of Palestinians that had teken place in Rafah and Khan Younis in 1956. He was shocked to discover that, but for one brief mention, the incidents had never been fully investigated.

The resulting graphic narrative is a blow-by-blow retelling of how Sacco, on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, embedded himself in Gaza and set about interviewing every witness he could find who had been in the towns of Khan Younis and Rafah on those fateful days in 1956.

The graphic narrative is stunning.

Not only does it reveal what went on in Palestine while the rest of the world was distracted by the Suez crisis but it also reveals what was going on there while Sacco was undertaking his researches. And it's all of a pattern. In fact, he might as well have been writing about the last 6 months in Gaza and the West Bank, the ring is so familiar.

But what really comes across to you is that this has been going on solidly since the NAKBA in 1948.

Look closely at Sacco's depiction of grief above and then go to my account of the Fallen Leaves exhibition I encountered at the Berlin Jewish Museum a few years ago.

Same faces !

THE HERZOG DYNASTY

Isaac Herzog, current President of Israel

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

This is the sort of wolf whistling indulged in by the current Presiden of Israel, Isaac Herzog. It is clearly designed to legitimise the current genocide in Gaza. But when faced with publicly acknowledging the implications of his statement he rowed back, fearful maybe of the consequences at a later stage when a Nürnberg type tribunal might see fit to chop his head off.

When a reporter asked Herzog to clarify whether he meant to say that since Gazans did not remove Hamas from power “that makes them, by implication, legitimate targets,” the Israeli president claimed, “No, I didn’t say that.”

But he then stated: “When you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself?”

The reason I'm bothering to pay any attention here to this racist is that he has strong Irish connections.

His father, Chaim Herzog, was born in Belfast, but he grew up in Dublin, on Bloomfield Avenue in "Little Jerusalem" off the South Circular Road. The people of that area were immensely proud of him as "local boy made good" when he became President of Israel.

After leaving Ireland, Chaim joind the British Army, in Intellegence, and was one of the first wave to liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after WWII. That must have left some impression on him and one wonders how he woud have reacted to both his son's remarks and to the abomination of the current Israeli genocide.

Chaim's father was Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Ireland and later Chief Rabbi of Israel. Isaac was known in Ireland for his Republican sympathies and is reported to have been an Irish speaker.

On what it actually meant to be Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Cormac Ó Gráda, has this lovely quote from Isaac's successor.

"Ninety-five percent of the population of Ireland is Catholic, five percent is Protestant, I am Chief Rabbi of the rest."

THREE MOBILE

I have my mobile account with Three. There was a reason for that at the time. Other members of my family were on three and we got free phone calls between us. That is no longer an imperative as most packages now include national phone calls irrespective of the operator at the othr end.

I'm on a €30 a month package. But I like to keep a little money in the account in case I get caught up in calls not coverd by the package.

Up to recently I had €23 under this heading.

And then one day it when I looked, it had gone. I was trying to figure out what calls I might have made that had eaten away at my store but couldn't think of any. A quick look at my log (but only for the last two months) didn't show any call charges.

So I took to Twitter, which is usually a place to get a prompt response because it's public, to ask Three about my money's disappearance. I got a quick response, transferred over to Direct Messaging and quickly got the explanation that Three had stolen my money.

They don't describe it that way of course. Apparently it had been there for 180 days and their terms of reference allow them to snitch it if it is unused by the end of that period.

Top Up Expiry

Effective from 1st December 2020, any top up credit on your account will expire after 180 days. Your Three Prepay account credit will expire 180 days from the date that your account was last topped up. For any pre-existing credit on your account as of 1 December 2020, the expiry date for that credit will start from 1 December 2020. If you do not use your top up credit or add another top up credit within the 180 days, the credit will expire and your balance will be set to zero. When you top up again, your expiry date will be 180 days from this new date.

Now the implication here is that I should have read the terms of reference more carefully, but really, you don't expect such bad a faith provisions to be included and even after reading them you don't normally think back when you decide to leave a bit of spare cash in the account for emergencies. For God's sake, I'm giving them €30 a month as it is.

Moreover, the piece appears to be badly drafted and does not justify them snitching my money.

I consider this provision, as it is drafted and implemented to be unfair and in bad faith.

I must check and see what is available from other providers.

FALLEN LEAVES

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This post is an extract from a report I did in 2014 of a visit to the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

One of the exhibits I reported on was entitled Fallen Leaves in a Void and it made a very bit impression on me.

When I came home, I found it was too emotional an item to write up straight away, but when I did get round to it, crying my way through writing it, I realised that including the item next door to it, on the olive tree, would add a whole new level of meaning, and clicking on the link in my text on that item would break your heart.

Little did I realise that the events of the October HAMAS attack and the subsequent collective punishment/genocide would endow my report with an even deeper meaning. Its relevance over the last decade reminds us that this whole business started with the 1948 NAKBA the completion of which looks to be at hand.

This is a truly creative and provocative piece. Some 10,000 faces punched out of steel are scattered on the ground. The work is dedicated not only to Jews killed in the holocaust, but to all victims of violence and war.

You are invited to walk over the faces and listen to the sounds they make as they shift beneath your feet.

This is what you see in front of you as you try to keep your balance.

And this is what you nearly fall on top of.

It is hard to convey the emotional impact of this place. The noises made by the shifting faces remind you both of screams, varying in pitch and volume depending on the sizes and shapes of the faces making them, and of something like a clanking tank running over fleeing victims. It is quite unnerving.

Then, in the middle distance, a shaft of light which turns the faces to gold. What does it mean? Hope amid despair? Gold from the teeth of the dead? Just plain Shekels? Even more unnerving

And then there is the olive tree. Presented here as a symbol of fertility and peace. Visitors can write a wish or prayer for placing on the tree.

Unfortunately, the olive tree for me has become a symbol of the wanton destruction of the livelihood of Palestinians on the West Bank by illegal settlers. So this item brought me up a bit short.

And then a mental exercise suggested itself to me and I would like you to go back to the beginning of the Fallen Leaves and slowly go through the sequence again. Only this time, still being true to the artist's wider conception, imagine they are the faces of the Palestinians of Gaza.

Even more unnerving.

NEW YORKER CARTOONS

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This is a lovely present Leentje got me for Christmas. She knows me too well and my preoccupation with cartoons. Unlike her father, Albert, I can't draw and am reduced to either appreciating the cartoons of others or messing around on Photoshop to make a point.

I should add that these two volumes weigh a ton, so I am leaving a volume open on a stand to flick through a few more pages from time to time.

My intention is to share some of the cartoons that I most appreciate here with you as I read the volumes. As I don't want this post to be too long I'll have to be extra selective and just include the crème de la crème.

"What's the next best medicine?"

I used to be a great fan of the Readers' Digest when I was young and they had a cartoon/joke section entitled "Laughter is the best Medicine". It's actually true and I have never forgotten it.

Speaking as a photographer, I think this joke is on the photographer. Love it.

"I'm turning into my mother."

This is a work of genius. I have seen it before but didn't know where it came from. A moving picture in two dimensions. It reminds me of the EBRD logo competition. Jacques Attali announced the competition for a logo and specified there should be no birds. This was because the French acronym for the Bank is "La Berd" and he foresaw all sort of smart remarks being made about flying on one wing and so on if there was a bird in the logo. Well the entry that won it was simple, two interlocking links in a chain inside a circle representing the globe. In my view, the absolute best of the entries.

But you can never be up to these arty farties. See what you think.

"I'll be damned. It says. 'Cogito ergo sum'".

This from 1958, anticipating AI in a big way, and we're not all the way there yet. Anticipates Arthur Clarke by a decade. "Open the Hatch, HAL!".

"Nice, but we'll need an environmental-impact study, a warranty, recall bulletins, recycling facilities, and twenty-four-hour customer support."

This one speaks its own volumes. Have we too much red tape, or too little. Is the tape the right colour or should it just be black and white like the Keffiyeh?

BOOK: THE COLLEGE OF EUROPE 1948-1998

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I had heard there was a book on the history of the College of Europe, so when I was there for the 40th anniversary of my graduation I enquired about it. "Sure, I think we have a second copy, I'll go and check." I don't know if they were going to sell or give it to me, no matter. I was dying to read it. But no, just like the Album/Yearbook of my original stay, it couldn't be found.

Then, the other day I Googled it, and lo and behold, there it was. Scanned by the College up to its website and downloadable.

The wait was unfortunate, but certainly worth it. It is a remarkable book, extremely well researched and very well written. I found it fascinating and full of resonances. I was there just short of the middle of the fifty year period covered by the book. Before me was the College in formation and after me its developement to close to today's model.

Residence: Sint-jakobsstraat 41

The book stresses the benefits and impact of living together. In my day we all lived in a single residence, including the Rector. But then we were only 54 students. By 1998 there were around 250, but the College wisely spread these around a number of residences in the city. One big residence would decrease intimacy and a sense of community.

The red line is my year.

The male:female balance seems to have improved since my day. We were males 4:1 females. By 1998 this had significantly evened out, but with females in the ascendant.

Jan Tinbergen. Flying Professor & Nobel Prize Winner

A serious lesson learned in the early days was that then you could not assemble a top quality resident academic staff because simply there was nowhere to go. In a bigger institution you could hope to work your way up the food chain but not there. So reliance was placed on the "flying professor" corps. A large number of professors/lecturers were recruited as visiting academics. So, you got the cream of universities, and even the EC administration, passing through and shedding their knowledge. Even my friend and co-Comenien(ne) Dame Helen Wallace gets a mention for being part of this corps. (P.45)

And the idea of Academic Assistants was gaining ground along the way. These would be students who were employed immediately after graduation to help the student body and manage the "flying corps", keeping their feet on the ground, so to speak, and ensuring they observed consistency with College policy and content in their teaching. Jacques Chabert was one of those in my year (P.46). It was Jacques who gave me the words of "La Charlotte" which could be rendered as a bawdy rugby song or a tragedy in the style of Racine's "Andromaque".

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This table shows the numbers and national composition of students during each five years over the period. I noted that there was one Irish before me (Desmond Murphy, 1963/4) but I'm fairly sure he was not financed by the Irish state as I was. So I think my claim to have been the first "official" Irish student probably still holds. (P.129)

Dining room - Sint-jakobsstraat

The College has retained its language policy from its foundation. Students are expected to be more or less fluent in English and French. There had been pressure from the Germans to add German but the view was that requiring three languages would be too much, and God knows, how would you ever get the French to drop French. I can tell you from my later EBRD experience that they'd prefer to pay a visit to Madame La Guillotine. There was also pressure at one stage to add Flemish but acquiring this would be a transitory advantage at best. Both German and Flemish (Dutch) can be learned or perfected in the language lab these days. In my year the German students generally sat at a separate table to draw attention to their ambitions for the language.

Eventually the College started awarding degrees. David McWilliams, for example, got his MA there. But initially at least this idea was blocked by the universities who didn't want to be upstaged. In my day you just got a Certificate in Advanced European Studies. I think, if you managed to stay on for a second year you got a Diploma. The book makes it clear that the College valued its independence and it pursued this over degree-awarding capacity over the years.

I was surprised to read that the "Bruggeling, Honoris Causa" practice was introduced during this period. I had thought it a later addition. The idea is marketed as "Honorary Bruges Citizenship" and is awarded to every graduating student each year. I, who predated the practice, applied for a retrospective award of "Honorary Bruges Citizenship", only having to grovel when it was pointed out to me in no uncertain terms that there had only been six awards of actual Honorary Bruges Citizenship in the history of the City, and these included the first founder-Rector of the College and the General who liberated Bruges after WWII. So what was this thing then? It was patiently explained to me that it was simply a souvenir piece of paper on which the City of Bruges recognised that you had resided there for an academic year. So now you know.

Three of my Professors:
Lory (history), Brugmans (l'Idée Europénne), Kormoss (Geography)

And how would I describe the College. Well the nearest I can get is an EC/EU Seminary. It's not like a university where you would expect a diversity of views right across the positive-negative spectrum. It is a training ground for missionaries for the "European (EU) Idea".

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There is a handy chronological list of Promotions with corresponding student numbers. (P.210/11)

On my return from my fiftieth anniversary trip I set up a blog with posts describing my own academic year in the College in 1967/8.

While I was in Brugge for that anniversary I spent most of my waking hours taking photos of Brugge 2018, visiting places I had omitted while I was there at the College fifty years before. I set many of these out in a separate blog with commentary.

FALLEN TREES

This was the scene that faced motorists on my estate on Thursday morning after the huge storm on Wednesday night. The road was blocked by a fallen tree.

In the grand Irish tradition of the Meitheal, a neighbour assembled a work group and what had been the topmost branches of the tree were sawn off and cleared from the road, leaving a single lane for cars to exit and enter the estate.

These are the cutaways.

What had come down wasn't a complete tree but one of a number of what appeard major trunks. A substantial weight, though, and it could have done serious damage had there been a passing car, cyclist or pedestrian there at the time. Thankfully this wasn't the case.

On Friday morning the City Council turned up and cleared the road and the path through the green space, sawing the trunk into sections and removing the branches. That was all they were geared up to do. Clear up the mess at ground level.

But the story was a bit more complicated and as some of the tree was rotten, the full tree had to come down. Its height extended to the top of the adjacent apartment bloc and there was one significant branch almost hanging in over the topmost apartment balcony.

The Council were followed by the contractors with the hoist (cherry picker) which was needed to deal with the rest of the tree. The skill here is to cut the tree from the top down having stripped the big branches of their smaller ones so that the big branch don't snag on the way down. These guys knew what they were doing and it was fascinating to watch them.

Their big challenge came with the overhanging branch. I had no idea how they would approach this. They had to be careful it didn't fall into any of the apartment balconies. But they knew what they were doing and had come prepared with a harness.

I thought they were going to attach the harness to the branch and then to the hoist, and wondered if it might capsize the hoist. But they were way ahead of me. They harnessed the top of the branch to a point lower down on the branch and when they cut the top it remained suspended, ready to be guided by hand.

All the small and medium-size stuff then went into the chipper. A noisy and savage beast.

And then came the next and last surprise. A little mechanical grabber to shift the piles of remaining logs into the back of a lorry.

I think I must have spent some two hours looking at all of this smoothly coordinated operation. An absolute education watching people who knew what they were doing.

PALESTINE

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I suppose if I were to start from the beginning, my earliest memory of the Jews, stoked by my church, was that they crucified Christ. Not a good start. As there were no Jews living in proximity in those days this concept had no operational meaning. I'd just add here that it took up to the 1960s and Pope John XXIII to absolve them of this horrendous crime.

However, in the course of my youth I had great admiration for the Jews, and by extension for Israel. The main player here was the Holocaust, and no member of my generation could have been unaffected by it. We were all on the side of the persecuted Jews. We empathised hugely with them and hated the Nazis for what they had done. Truth told, we hated the Nazis anyway, having been raised on British comics and British war heroes.

Then there was the Exodus and the establishment of the State of Israel. A huge achievement for the Jews and a fitting act of reparation for what had been done to them. At last, a safe homeland, not only democratic but sort of socialist as well. We admired the Kibbutzim and many Irish people did a stint in one of them. The coming together of people to help one another. Ar scáth a chéile. The Meitheal.

We became more aware at home of the huge contribution of the Jews to Irish society. And at a later stage, Yanky Fachler wrote a book about a hundred such people. We had never realised there were so many of them.

And there the matter sort of rested until, over time, we came to realise that there was more to it than we had been led to believe.

Israel had not been virgin territory waiting for the return of the Jews who had been scattered to the four corners of the earth two thousand years ago. It had, in the meantime been inhabited by Arabs, Palestinians, scraping a living from a difficult land. And the glorious establishmnet of the State of Israel had a totally different meaning for them.

For them it was the Nakba, "The Catastrophe", which I had been totally unaware of until my later years. The new settlers/occupiers banished half the population out of the area and spent the next seventy years grabbing the land of the rest of them, killing and torturing them, and finally locking them up in a vast concentration camp which was totally dependent on Israel for its existence and day to day survival.

The United Nations, God help us, had decided on a two state solution to the problem. An Israeli state coexisting with a Palestinian one, but this had been long ignored by the Israelis, who actively encouraged Jewish immigration to, inter alia, swell their population while they continued unimpeded in their land grab from the Palestians who they held in general contempt.

To cut a long story short, that's where we are today. And it is crystal clear to me that the displacement of the Palestinians, started with the Nakba, is the ultimate aim of current Israeli action against the Palestinians.

Israel has a habit of getting its own way and harnessing the unqualified support of other states, such as the US and UK, and it currently considers itself unstoppable. In this, it is probably right. A long propaganda war, conflating the Jews and the State of Israel, has struck fear into the hearts of those who might think of supporting the Palestinians but who know that any criticism of Israel will have them labelled as antisemitic and who wants that around their neck.

So, today and tomorrow I am flying the Palestinian, not the Hamas, flag in support of the London march. And I'll fly it again on appropriate occasions.

Which group are you in?

And I will wear with honour my blocking on Twitter by the Israeli embassy in Dublin, whose record on inspection is one of what they most give out about, antisemitism. They are doing Jews worldwide no favours and it is interesting that significant Jewish participation in the pro-Palestinian marches is beginning to emerge.

Fallen Leaves

Check this out. It made me cry, though the experience was is far short of that of the current genocide/ethnic cleansing or whatever you're having yourself that is going on today

BRUGGELING HONORIS CAUSA 2

Brugge, SPQB, Senatus Populusque Brugiensis
Window in the College residence
in anticipation of a visit by Napoleon

This post is a little piece of indulgience on my part.

Albert Folens' associations with the Belgian city of Brugge (Bruges) are fairly tentative. His aunt was a nun there. He nearly ended up in prison there. And some of his relations live there today.

My own associations with the city are somewhat stronger.

I spent an academic year in the College of Europe in 1967/8 (Promotion Comenius) and returned on the fiftieth anniversary of my graduation in 2018 to celebrate with fellow students on the site of St. John's Hospital where Folens' aunt was a nun. I like to fantasise that Dweerstraat is named after my stay there (Ó Duibhir). And I finally traced a book, in which RTÉ tells us Folens claimed to be a war criminal, to a bookshop on the Potterierei in Brugge.

The city itself has very strong associations with the "Battle of the Golden Spurs", a battle which has inspired the Flemish cause through the ages and which is celebrated in the famous Flemish novel "The Lion of Flanders" by Frederick Conscience. This novel was a formative influence in Folens' young life.

St. John's Hospital

The Battle of the Golden Spurs
Market Square

Commemorating my stay in Brugge?

Willy Tibergien who sent me the book
Thank you Willy

The book misquoted by RTÉ

Me in Schiphol July 2023

Finally, not Brugge but Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I passed through here in both directions this year and on the return journey thought of Albert Folens' flight to Ireland from this very spot some 75 years ago.

You can follow my adventures regarding the title of this post here. But I do think the College owes me the piece of paper to confirm my continuing honorary residence in Brugge, even if I am not strictly entitled to the "Freedom of the City".

If you're interested in Albert Folens, you can read about him in a new book by his daughter.

This is a link to the book launch:

CROOKED IN THE CAR SEAT

Brian in class in Coláiste

I always knew Brian Lynch was a writer. He was the favourite of our English master Michael Judge a really fine teacher and a great judge of writers.

The first piece of Brian's I read was Pity for the Wicked. This was a savage indictment of the IRA's assassination campaign during the troubles. It includes the Pat Gillespie incident and the collateral damage from the Mountbatten bombing in Mullaghmore. It made me weep and then burn with anger. Brian did not do himself any favours going against the prevailing grain in that one, but, as usual he has been vindicated in the long term.

Brian mentioned recently to our class that Colm Toibín's Preface to his recent publication of Crooked in the Car Seat is worth a read on its own, and that it is. Colm explores the nuances of how homosexuals coped in company at a time when homosexuality was a crime. There was much fear and insecurity and each person brought their bespoke closet around with them, so to speak.

It is no wonder that thinking back I can't remember ever meeting a homosexual in my youth.

In his introduction to Crooked in the Car Seat Brian cites Tomás MacAnna, then Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre, who asssured him that the Board's acceptance of the play would be a formality, only to have it stymied by internal board bickering.

He recalls earlier contact with MacAnna who wrote and produced our patriotic school pageants in Coláiste. In one of these he cast Brian as Douglas Hyde, below, a character about whom Brian has a lot to say in his introduction.

Brian as Douglas Hyde in MacAnna's Glóir Réim

Brian makes the interesting, and correct, comment that the famous Croke Park pageant in 1966 was a vast upscaling of our earlier school pageant. Incidentally, as Brian says, the term Glóir Réim, which is what we got, is completely inadequately translated into English as pageant. A pageant is sort of passive, what we had was a passionate and pro-active re-enactment of the Rising and, though I was not there, I'm sure the same can be said of the Croke Park venture.

The book is interesting for the script of the play with its overt references to homosexuality and women's periods, taboos of their day. Given that it's not exactly James Bond, my feeling is that you would need to see the play performed to get any sort of a feel for it. I found it quite a depressing read. The difficulty is that in our changed world it would surely lack its original impact.

So the value of this book, apart from recording the script for posterity and bringing us an interactive copy of the programme, lies in both Colm Toibín's introduction which I found fascinating and Brian's own story of the shinanegans at the Abbey.

I always love to see references to the long departed and much underrated Eblana theatre with which I had some minor association myself in its day.

THE FAIR WEATHER CAMPER VAN

This is a Volkswagen California Ocean Camper Van.

I have read the advertisements and specs and nowhere does it say the roof leaks when extended in the rain.

So I thought my friend was having me on when I was told the story.

Now, what is the point of a camper van that leaks in the rain? I am baffled.

The VW dealer purported to fix my friend's camper van but finally lost patience and as much as admitted that it was supposed to leak, so what's the problem?

And that seemed close to a true answer when you look at the California Club site and see pages and pages of people complaining about leaks.

I am not a consumer lawyer but my understanding is that when a firm sells you something as new it is supposed to work, and it seems to me that an integral part of working in this case is that it doesn't leak in the rain.

And these things cost a mint. You'd spend your life savings on one of them.

So we know where the dealer stands - six months after the purchase the roof still leaks.

And where do Volkwagen stand on this issue? Are they hoping that the dealers will shut the complainers up and they won't have to deal with it.

Now, apart from their title "Volks Wagen" having evolved from the Beetle, promoted by one Adolph Hitler to bring cars to the people, the firm itself was involved in a massive recall when it turned out they were fidding emissions tests.

The leaky roofs are not on the same mega scale, so why are they not fixing them.

It looks as though it will take a court case, and the consequential reputational damage to both VW and the dealers involved to sort this out once and for all.

And just for the record, I drove a Beetle way back. Lovely car to drive and economical in their day. And the roof never once leaked.

Stay tuned.

-o0o-

Update
Well, the van has vanished from my friend’s driveway and she is absolutely refusing to talk about it.

Now I have a nose for this sort of thing since I followed Stuart Syvret’s campaign attempting to hold the authorities in Jersey (CI) to account for their complicity in, and attempt to cover up, child sex abuse on the island.

Strangely for a man who could never stop talking, Stuart went silent on one of the court cases he was taking against the authorities. His friends wondered what was going on and it finally emerged, or they came to the reasonable conclusion, that he had been served with a gag order. Not just any old gag order, but one which prohibited from revealing the gag order. This is known as a super-gag order.

In more modern times, just give a thought to Stormy Daniels.

I read somewhere that legislation is on the way making NDAs unenforceable, but I can’t remember whether that is here or in the US or somewhere else. If it’s not here it should be. NDAs are always entered into under some form of duress and the only justification for them can be commercial secrecy and not a denial of human or customer rights.

I’ll finish with a quote from a recently published novel. The statement is made by a bit of a bragging idiot attempting to impress his girlfriend and no doubt eventually get inside her pants as soon as he can manage to get his tongue out of her mouth.

“And Volkswagen was started by the Nazis” he said “So Cass shouldn’t be sorry if her dad’s business [a Volkswagen dealership] closed down.”

HOLD THE LINE

I came across this small military telephone exchange on a recent visit to the Fort bij Vechten museum on the old Dutch Waterline near Houten in the Netherlands.

It brought back memories, as this was the sort of telephone exchange we had in the Irish Department (Ministry) of Finance when I joined in the late 1960s, though ours was on a bigger scale.

It was manned by a group of young women (then called girls) who most of the new young recruits got to know on a daily basis.

I remember an occasion in the 1970s when both features described above proved most useful.

I was working, inter alia, on Northern Ireland affairs in the Department. An occasion arose where I would need to contact the duty (out of hours) officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs (Foreign Ministry) later that evening to be updated on a project which that Department was involved in.

Now, when the time came for me to contact that Department, I was sitting, with a friend from Radio Éireann, in Madigan's pub in Moore St. not far from the GPO where Radio Éireann was headquartered in them days.

So, I would have to ring the Department of Foreign Affairs from the public phone in the pub with clearly identifiable pub noises in the background. Remember the public phones with their A & B buttons?

In all the circumstances I figured I'd have a job convincing the duty officer that I was who I was. Then, in a Eureka moment, the idea came to me.

I rang the Finance switch where the girl knew me and asked her to put me through to Foreign Affairs but to make sure first that she identified herself as Finance and then introduced me onto the line.

And Bob's your uncle.

I love the old technology.