Eimear O’Callaghan

Belfast Days


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Unbelievable. Shock no.2 came in RK, when Sister V said that my test and three others were good. I came 1st again – 89%. Agnes seemed stunned and so was I.

       Took half day because Jim and Paul are off school. Hectic afternoon – the dog knocked down the plant holder and ran off with the plant!

       7 bombs in town, no injuries. Man found shot yesterday turned out to be a soldier (lived in Dublin).

       Maths test tomorrow because we didn’t do it on Wednesday – can’t win. Frankie rang – I FAILED Applied Maths.

      Shrove Tuesday, Feb 15

       Pouring rain and very dark. As usual, we slept in.

       Spanish papers weren’t corrected. Sister Virgilius said she thought my answer on existentialism was excellent – in fact it was all guess work! I was scared stiff going in to Applied Maths class – but she didn’t say anything about my test, so I didn’t worry. Saw my mistakes – carelessness. Spent free class preparing for Maths exam, rest of school sent home half day. Only 8 idiots left to do Maths – were told we could do them at home if we wanted! Not too bad.

       2 bombs in town – Sawyer’s and an engineering works completely wrecked.

       Had piles of greasy, sugary pancakes for tea – lovely. Had made up my mind not to open a book tonight – kept my word and opened nothing except this diary.

      Ash Wednesday, Feb 16

       One of the coldest and most miserable days I have come across this winter. Into school as usual. Had intended going to 8.30 Mass but wasn’t there in time. Got French marks – 55%, hope to get Maths and Spanish marks tomorrow.

       In spite of going to bed fairly early last night, I am exhausted today and decided to go even earlier tonight. However it is now 11.15 and I’m still up.

       Wrote to the Bank Buildings about a job – keeping fingers crossed.

       Last night was a relatively peaceful night – 5 men shot by IRA for stealing, only one seriously injured. Bomb in tyre manufacturer’s in Belfast this afternoon.

       Spent night by the fire trying to keep half warm, frozen all night.

       Newsflash: soldier killed by shooting and gelignite bomb on M1 near Lisburn. Man hooded and shot dead in Derry – probably IRA job.

       On that miserable note, get into bed.

      Thurs, Feb 17

       Didn’t bother to go round to Assembly – too tired and fed up. Got Maths marks – 58% – terrible disappointment, had (though I hate to say it) expected more. Liz and Frankie got around 80%. No Spanish results.

       I looked like a wreck today – white face and black rings under my eyes – decided to go to bed early but didn’t go till 12!

       Didn’t keep my Lent resolution either. Didn’t go to Mass, too lazy and tired. Have decided to go every second day instead.

       Daddy’s birthday tomorrow and then he’s off to Edinburgh on Monday, shall miss him. (Haven’t bitten my nails for 3 days now, must keep it up).

       Man shot in Derry was 45-year-old Catholic UDR man. A callous murder. Soldier killed was 18 years old. 3 bombs in town, no serious injuries, thank God.

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      Lent had just begun but my commitment to my resolutions was already wavering. Belfast, in the spring of 1972, was no place for self-sacrifice and mortification.

      The weather was unremittingly dreary and my exam results were neither as good as I had hoped nor as impressive as they would have been in the past. The Applied Maths test which had turned out so badly for me was only a ‘mock’ A-Level but I had never failed an examination before. I hated the subject with a vengeance; nevertheless, the news of my failure – delivered so gleefully by one of my ‘friends’ – left me shattered and humiliated. There appeared to be no prospect of me getting away from Belfast, and the IRA was slowly but surely cranking up the pressure.

      Traditionally, the six-week period before Easter inspired an attempt at self-denial and we saved the sweets that were given to us or bought with our own pocket money. On St Patrick’s Day, mid-way through our period of penance, we feasted on a congealed mass of Fruit Salads, Black Jacks, Drumsticks and Toffee Logs, scoffing the remainder on Easter Sunday. Five months before my seventeenth birthday, I decided I was too grown up for such childish observance and opted, as the nuns exhorted us, to do something positive and worthy like going to daily Mass instead. My resolution – like my resolve – was short-lived.

      Life was generally depressing, my self-discipline was shaky but mothers and fathers seemed to be made of sterner stuff. Remarkably, the wheels of family life kept turning and parents went about their business, not just in my home but in the majority of homes across Belfast, as a new normality established itself.

      Every weekday morning, my father left home just after eight o’clock and made his way by whatever means of transport was available – bus, black taxi or on foot – to his desk in Churchill House in the city centre. At midday, my mother set out for the part-time job she loved; looking after dozens of West Belfast’s most deprived three- and four-year-olds. Operating from a prefab on the Upper Glen Road, she and her colleagues supplied these innocents with paper and chubby crayons; ‘playdough’ made up daily from flour, water and dye; storybooks and sand – and shielded them for four hours from the brutality outside. Across the city, despite the unrest, shopping was done, houses were cleaned, children were sent to school and church, and to doctors’ and dentists’ appointments. Meals were cooked and pancakes were served up on Shrove Tuesday.

      The disturbing prospect of my father being sent to Edinburgh within a matter of days to attend a three-week Post Office training course unsettled me. I couldn’t remember him ever being away from us before, other than on the rare occasion when he and my mother might have spent a night in Dublin, and I was worried about what might happen while he was gone. I wished he didn’t have to leave us.

      Fri, Feb 18

       Daddy’s birthday. We haven’t bought him anything yet but we’ll get him something before he goes to Scotland.

       Three MPs – Unionist Phelim O’Neill, Independent Tom Gormley and Bertie McConnell – join the Alliance Party. Their first 3 MPs, doing well considering their party was only established last year.

       Daddy went to a meeting of the Citizens’ Defence Committee tonight – Annual General Meeting – and was nominated as the new Press officer. All pleased with himself. Came home about 12 and then went down to Gordon’s.

       Couple more explosions down town – no re-ports of anyone being injured.

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      I proudly shared my father’s delight when he told us he had been officially installed as the CDC press officer. The role was entirely voluntary and the organisation’s decision to acknowledge the time and effort he had selflessly devoted to it since early in the Troubles was no more than he was due.

      He often quoted the assertion by the eighteenth-century Irish political thinker, Edmund Burke, that, ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’ Like many other decent men and women who cared passionately about what was happening to their community, he was trying to steer it away from the abyss into which we appeared to be heading. We adjusted our family routine to allow him to incorporate new ‘political’ activities into his already busy days.

      On the nights he was free from meetings, he lit his pipe and took up his customary position at the living