I am holding my sister, Libby, responsible. Her generosity in allowing me unfettered access to her elegant apartment in Belfast, was irresponsible. After a leisurely breakfast, it was time to vacate. An exhaustive check to ensure all belongings were accounted for, and...
Tony Ferguson
Author
Unlike many old gits, I think I was born an old git.
My granny was never convinced about schooling. She prevented me going to the local primary school until I was six. I made my debut in wider society as the oldest kid in the class. That feeling of being “older” has stuck to me ever since.
Leaving school to pursue my career in a tarmac gang, I quickly appreciated what granny had missed and enrolled in university a year later, again putting myself at the wrinkly end of the age spectrum in the 1975 intake at Hull University. Twenty-one is so much older than nineteen.
The older I have got, the more rebellious I have become towards age. At 62, Accenture, a renowned management consultancy with a reputation for being rammed with bright, young dynamos headhunted me. Accenture employed over 400,000 people then, one of whom was my son, Ronan. Ever the wag, he identified how common it was in Accenture for parent/ child combinations…but surely none where the child had joined before the parent! Age can distinguish or demean.
Royal Irish Fusiliers just come from the Chemical Works, Roeux 21st May 1917
I began writing my book on my sixty-fifth birthday. I dedicate my meagre efforts with the pen to my ageing brethren. In defiance. It is never too late. There are still dreams to pursue. Or hobbled after at least. Never give up! To paraphrase a more illustrious senior: “Don’t grow old gracefully- fight it every inch of the way!”
To the old gits out there- this one is for you.
Keep it lit.
Andy Symington: Tyrone’s Most Wanted Man – Volume 1 The Somme
Andy Symington volunteered to join the Royal Irish Fusiliers in 1916. Over the next seven years, he would participate in the Battle of the Somme, the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, a trilogy of military service experienced by fewer than sixty men, historians have estimated.
His fighting career was a convulsion of contradictions: having been honourably discharged from the British army with a Silver War badge due to wounds and shellshock, he returned to Ireland and fought against the British (Black & Tans and Auxiliaries) for the nascent IRA, becoming the most wanted man in Tyrone in 1921; in 1922 he switched sides again, became a captain in the Free State army and fought against the IRA in the Civil War.
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Tom Kettle: Eulogy to Wasted Talent
Loss The Somme would grind on for another four months. A sustained exercise in futility and senseless sacrifice. The bloodiest battle in the history of mankind, ultimately almost one million men perished, friend and foe. With numbers so enormous, a statistical...
Forbidden City: The Catacombs of Paris
Bodies. Remains. Corpses. Cadavers. Graves. Vaults. Crypts. Tombs. The profusion of words we have to describe our transition to the Hereafter, serves to underline our morbid fascination with death. A very human thing in us all. I am going to add two more words to our...