Write Said Fred, So I Did

Fred is the name I’ve given to my imagination. Ever since I was young there’s been a voice nagging away inside my head telling me that there’s something I have to do. I went into teaching because I like being around people and I loved history, also it was a safe job, with a good pension and lots of holidays, with the added bonus that it made my parents happy. But I was nowhere near working myself out. I still haven’t managed it, but at least now I know it’s a lifelong journey. Back then, I knew I was into sport, music, film and books, the kind of things and people that made my heart sing, but I had absolutely no idea how to go about handling what was going on inside me, the endless chatter of ideas and dreams desperately waiting to come true.

The external world had stamped its authority on me from an early age. Society’s expectations were imprinted by a school system that rewarded regurgitation and encouraged uniformity and conformity. To this day It continues to churn out people who are so happy to have survived the whole fiasco that they grow up believing the only way to stay on top is to maintain the status quo. If it was good enough for me, then it’s good enough for them, the kind of thinking that makes the world stand still. Nobody ever told me writing could be fun and I was too lost in the endless repetition of school to work it out. The social and sporting side of things was okay, but the academic side was a slow painful descent into chaos. It felt to me like being different was actively discouraged. Same uniforms. Same haircuts. Same black shoes. Same thoughts. For me back then writing’s function was tied only to the completion of homework and essays that got thrown back at you with a scowl and a ‘could try better’, even the good ones. All these academic exercises I didn’t want to do, but had to if I was to pass the exams. They bored the arse off me and left me anxious. I was too busy trying to cope with the compulsory subjects I didn’t like or have any aptitude for to spot what I was good at, but I had no choice but to inflict my absolute ignorance on whatever teacher was trying to get me through the things I was no good at. If I wanted to get to college, it was an absolute necessity to jump over obstacles the size of Becher’s Brook like Mathematics and French. It was made all the worse by the fact that I knew the chances of ever using these subjects once I left school were about as small as a flea on anti-steroids medication.

I’ve listened to all the arguments about a rounded education, but none of it made any made sense and it still doesn’t. Up to a certain age, yes, but by fifteen I knew what I liked and what I didn’t. All the Leaving Certificate did was batter what little confidence I had left and make me feel stupid, and I wasn’t the only one. I was drowning, apart from the bright beacon that was History class, which I loved. It helped that I had a great teacher who made us feel like anything, up to and beyond achieving a good result in the state exam, was actually possible. In Philip Gray’s class I felt ten feet tall. It was here that I discovered hope. I’ve held onto it tightly ever since. It took me until I reached college to realise I actually possessed some degree of intelligence, rather than being just a dumb dreamer lost in a system that wasn’t prepared to celebrate my talents, not that I even knew I had any at that point.  If ever there was a round peg in a square hole I was it. It would take a long time to wrestle myself free of the years I spent struggling to swim upstream. I became so good at drifting that I even got to do the Leaving Certificate twice. Often it felt like I was my very own Disney character, sleepwalking through a form of life that felt so alien to everything I believed in. This was made even worse because I had nothing to compare it to. I had a feeling there was another world out there waiting, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure.

Even the way English was taught dumbfounded me. The beauty of poetry and prose relegated to being broken down forensically and understood rather than being felt. It wasn’t until sixth year when Emily Dickinson reared up that I connected with a writer on a base level. Perhaps the funeral in my brain matched the relentless beat of the Irish education system as it marched us over the Leaving Certificate cliff. Something else I liked about Emily was that no one seemed to really know what she was on about, not even the teacher or the usually reliable book of poetry revision notes. It was refreshing to be allowed to think for myself for once. It felt like an active state of rebellion on Emily’s part and I loved her all the more for it. 

I finally began to write for fun during my college years, bad poetry and long winding ramblings inspired by the music I was listening to on the radio or the books I was buying in Hodges Figgis and Easons. Reading teaches us so much. Mostly, I kept my thoughts to myself. After all it didn’t make sense to be sharing them after what my school reports said. Apparently I was a trier. I was so good at trying; I even got a prize for it. Some consolation I suppose, but what good is it when you can’t decipher algebra or write a story in a language of a country I was never going to live in, but was required to pass in the exam if I was to get into college in a country that spoke mostly English, which thankfully I just happened live in and to be fairly fluent in. I even checked with the college to see if any of the courses were taught in French and they told me only the French ones, which was nice to hear.  I wondered if the people who wanted to do French in college had to pass History to gain access to the hallowed halls of academia. It only seemed fair. The other good news was that there would be very little Math in the actual History course, apart from dates, which I had thankfully gotten the hang of by the age of eighteen. I have always been a deep enough thinker, but Math proved way beyond my comprehension. I remember my father’s extreme frustration when he tried to help me, but to be fair, he might as well have been trying to teach a dog how to meow.

It was in college that I met another History teacher who showed me the path to a greater and improved sense of self. Up until that day, college had proved to be more of the same in terms of being told what to think and write to pass the annual summer exams, just so you could do it all over again the following year. That was until I met Doctor Ciaran Brady who asked and expected a lot more of me. I sat in his office and we talked about history, football, life and death amongst other things. We even went to the pub on the odd occasion. He opened me up to curiosity and wrote one of the funniest references I have ever had the pleasure of receiving, one that told me he knew who I really was. He raised the bar higher and expected me to jump it. Suddenly, I started to get higher grades. Connection, belief, confidence, time and encouragement are particularly important in education. They free people to step into who they are rather than who they think they are expected to be to please the system.

From then on something shifted. I’ve have always tried my best to find my own path, standing separate from the crowd to my own detriment at times. It can be a lonely place. I was an Arsenal fan when it seemed that everyone in Ireland supported Manchester United, Celtic or Liverpool. They still do and I still am, an Arsenal fan that is. Lots of things change in life, but one of them isn’t your football team. New experiences were also the key to finding my tribe. I was a frequent visitor to Dalymount to roar on Bohemians. I loved Wednesday afternoons supporting the Republic of Ireland soccer team in Lansdowne. In 1983 I went to Croke Park to support Dublin in the flesh for the first time, a wonderful August summer’s day when a last gasp Barney Rock goal rescued a draw against Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final and sent Hill 16 into a blue blur of mad crazy ecstasy. I was there again a few weeks later when the ‘Twelve Apostles’ lifted Sam on a bitter wet and windy day against Galway. I was beginning to find out who I was. I found new meaning in the lyrics of Geldof, Bono, McGowan and Springsteen, and the words of writers like Kerouac and Irving. Suddenly words were there to be enjoyed, rather than endured.

These people who I had never met helped me to navigate my way through the swirling currents of adolescence. I felt I was a little late on that front as well. Girls toyed with and troubled me. Nothings changed there! The fact that they kept their distance for a good while, even if it was completely understandable, didn’t help. I was nervous around the female sex, and it took me a good while to figure out that what I feared was losing them, even more than their initial absence, so when my first girlfriend ran off with somebody else I learnt what it was like to really cry, until I slowly found out that time does indeed heal even the most broken of hearts. It was good practice because it happened again later. After falling at the first hurdle, I met a beautiful girl visiting Dublin for the summer from Rhode Island who taught me it was okay to love again, until she had to go back home. The world came to an end again, but at least it was a different kind of ending this time round as I knew it was coming down the line. I was learning that people come and go; something that permeates life.

I met Jesse, the American girl, in the hostel I was working in. I’d got the job at the start of the summer before I went to college. It was here I met lots of wonderful people from all five corners of the world. See I told you my grasp of math wasn’t all that good. The place loosened me up. I learnt so much more there in four years than I ever learnt in school. Like Ringsend Tech, where I had repeated the Leaving Certificate, hostel life exposed me to the rough edges that had remained hidden in the rarified air of the fee-paying institution where I had spent the previous six years. It helped that Ringsend was populated by numerous other castoffs from the Irish education system, a band of brothers and sisters I quickly grew to love. But instead of holding us back, our previous history allowed us to celebrate our failures together and after a year most of us where ready to move onto bigger and better things. Thankfully the second time round I did well enough to get into college. By now I was going out with a fiery Catalan girl called Mercedes and even when we broke up, we stayed friends and I was back and forward to Barcelona for the next few years. It seemed that the more the world opened up, the more restless Fred was getting, leaving me with no option but to pick up my pen and write.

Something that goes to show that even in the toughest of environments, like the Burren below, wonderful things still happen. There deep down in the warmth of the grikes dividing the rocky landscape, wild and beautiful flowers have learnt not only survive, but to flourish. You see, when it comes to creativity, there’s always hope.