Continuing the Ballina diaries of the late 1960s...
Saturday October 22nd, 1966
The Castlebar Song Contest has been won by a song entitled, not too surprisingly, Caislean A'Bharraigh. Its opening lines are as follows: Caislean A'Bharraigh Caislean A'Bharraigh, Town in the county Mayo.
You figured grand When Lake's Great Command was routed by French invaders.
This embarrassingly self-congratulatory "verse" has lodged in my mind because it was being sung ad nauseam last night by Walter in Jordan's, to where I had adjourned after my week's library duties for what I thought would be a quiet pint or three.
Walter is of course a fanatical follower of Ballina's great hero, the French General Jean-Joseph Humbert, and any mention of the fellow's great victory over General Lake in 1798 at the infamous "Castlebar Races", is guaranteed to put him in good humour; hence his enthusiasm last night. And of course Walter is not one to let the lack of a singing voice, or the possession of a notable stammer, hinder the delivery of a song.
I think I may stay away from Jordan's until Walter has calmed down a little.
I have got used to seeing him genuflect each time he passes the town's Humbert Monument, and know that when he is not at his railway station duties, he deals (quite lucratively) in the skins of goats and rabbits - just as the younger Humbert apparently did - but enough is enough. It is hard enough to maintain sanity in Ballina without giving tacit approval to other people's demented fantasies.
Sunday, October 23
Ballinrobe court notes (courtesy of the Western People): a woman from Partry was summoned for causing obstruction on Bowgate Street by the parking of her car.
Defending solicitor addressing prosecuting guard: "There's a short note on my file which says that she rushed into a shop wearing a mini-skirt." Guard: I didn't notice any mini-skirt.
Solr: You didn't notice a mini-skirt? Guard: Well I didn't.
Solr: Are you married, Guard? Guard: I am.
Solr: Perhaps that explains it.
What I would like to know is, what "it" is explained by "that"? A fine of ten shillings was imposed. I am none the wiser.
Monday, October 24th
Karl, the Pontoon anarchist, dropped in to the library yesterday morning, ostensibly to read up on the history of Italian fascism, but in fact to ogle Ms Cartwright, whom he regularly tells me he "greatly admires".
The feeling is not reciprocated ("I abhor anarchism and adore order", Ms Cartwright stiffly told him on one occasion) but she does not appear to object to him, or indeed any male, staring at her. It is one of the baffling contradictions in her nature. But she is a woman after all.
Anyway I started chatting to Karl about reporting and the law - knowing that this is just the kind of thing to get him into a lather of outrage - and sure enough he soon pulled out a yellowed newspaper cutting about a Belmullet man who was fined £1 for being drunk and disorderly.
The guard apparently said that he "heard him tell everybody he was the best man in town", and that he "challenged everyone on the street." Karl's point, which he continued to make for the next half-hour, was that for all the guard knew, the defendant might very well be the "best person in town", and who was the guard to suggest he wasn't?
And had the man not a perfect right to challenge everyone on the street to refute his assertion? Was it not a free country? Had not Karl himself left his native Frankfurt in protest at its jackboot capitalism and secretive suppression of individual rights, including the issuing of any challenge deemed appropriate? I saw Miss Cartwright raising her eyes to Heaven at this point and winked at her in a rare moment of complicity. Of course it was all my fault for introducing the subject.
Mother calls Karl the "Pontoon Antichrist". I have tried to explain that he is merely an anarchist, a slightly different thing, but I now begin to think Mother may be right all along. Certainly Karl gets angry enough to merit the term.
PS: I am already regretting my wink in Miss Cartwright's direction. After Kurt's departure she winked at me a further three times for no apparent reason. What on earth is on her mind? Just before she left, she told me she was going to the Savoy later on to see Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. When I shrugged my shoulders she asked if I did not think it was an unsuitable film for a woman to attend on her own?
Being totally bemused with questions at this stage, I said I presumed any film about birds would probably be harmless enough, and she shook her head, sadly I thought, and departed.
It is probably time I had an early night for once because with all this mental stress I am quite worn out.
(To be continued).
bglacken@irish-times.ie