The driller drilled, and the man in the suit consulted the planners; the labourers dug, their sweat stealing moisture from the clay. A long line of trenches spanned acres… the foreman dreamed of concrete; rows and rows of concrete… dig dig dig, till the architect smiled, and the missionaries scaled the proverbial mountain and mounted a cross.
The church would oversee everything… nothing, not even life of the tiniest scale, would go unseen.
How they must have melted in the heat, with the firepower available, to visit bedrooms late at night and make sure the sexual antics were for procreation only. Large signs were erected saying so… “and for those of you who don’t understand Latin”, and it was good, and people were born and bred in these concrete fields.
I was no different; no different than the lamb, or the pig, or the cow. I was born in an outhouse on the periphery of the Noggin.
My companion is confused as we step into the playing fields; these waterlogged fields from long ago.
She has the camera, she wonders what I am looking for. “A shot of the church,” I tell her, “it says all about Sallynoggin,” the big yellow church, and then I tell her, “some families brought up 14 children in these two-bed houses.” She swallows in disbelief, then captures this really great shot.
I want to tell her about the red bus and how all has changed. They have banked the field and the GAA have left. Now “Joes” have the use of all the pitches.
I see myself jumping from the red bus and racing into the field full of daises… a boy of seven collects flowers, a gift to his mother, a safe delight as she opens the front door. Oh yes, the red bus, and watching like a hawk so as not to miss the stop.
We are leaving, mission accomplished, but what I am looking at is in miniature. The drillmaster is finished; he has created the final scene.
It is a typical Noggin day blackened by the moist air churning up the dirt.
So they have cleaned the pigs’ field, putting in fences for show jumping, yet my memory is of prohibition, rats and weed.
I tell my companion how lucky we were to live so close to the wild west; we could walk to Killiney Hill in a half an hour, over fields where strong bulls sported rings through their nose. But then a better class of concrete was poured and the trail to Mullins Hill and Killiney was changed forever.
That mattered not as the sociologist wakes; the Noggin actually had a middle class; a wannabe middle class, a working class and you won’t believe me but a type of underclass to go with it.
Humanity moves slowly; the spy in the church steeple looked on at folk tending to their slice of field.
Nogginers by Paul Kestell was launched last week at the Irish Writers Centre
