The Great Emirates Laptop Ban

Abu Nidal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is notable that the UK, in slavishly following the 'security advice' of close ally the USA, has not included the UAE and Qatar in its version of the great laptop ban. It takes no great stretch of the imagination or cognitive leap to infer that this ban has a commercial implication, working as it does directly to the detriment of the three global airlines operating a 'feeder flight' model out of the UAE and Qatar.

The biggest threat to the three is a loss of business class travellers, probably the only people who will lose out significantly. While it's great for parents to provide kids with tablets to keep them entertained (those of us without children clearly think this is just bad parenting, but that's quite another kettle of marmosets), Emirates' much-lauded ICE entertainment system offers films, music, games across literally thousands of channels. The big hit comes when you lose that precious work time.

The solution appears to me to be blindingly simple - and if EK moves fast enough, they could get in a massive media hit out of this one. Buy in 100 Chromebooks, 600 Lenovo Ultrabooks and 300 Macbook Airs. Load them with MS Office. Provide them on loan to business class passengers (they could be booked at time of flight booking or even online check-in) who can bring a USB memory stick (or, if they forget, be offered a complimentary little red Emirates one) to bring/save their work on. To be honest, most these days work with online resources anyway, so could log in using any machine. The machines would be cleaned (both hygenically and data-wise) after each use. The IT stuff could be handled by EK subsidiary Mercator, already (quietly) one of the world's great software and services players.

Catch the current news cycle and you've got the solution in seconds. It might not fit everyone's needs, but it'll comfort many - and I think catch the public imagination, too. In the face of a mean-spirited and dubious use of security as protectionism, EK could show it's the customer who comes first and they're willing  - as always - to go the extra mile.

The ban is, of course, quite loopy. For a start, UAE security and civil defence is way better than US security. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are major international hubs and trusted by tens of millions of passengers each year. Their security procedures and capabilities are best practice. And there's nothing to stop a terrorist flying a bomb from Paris or St Petersburg - the idea that only Arab airports could be the source of a threat is as risible as Trump's Muslim ban. Which targets, it should be noted, different nations to the laptop ban.

Not that I, for one, am in any rush to go to the US. I have stamps in my passport showing a lifetime's travel around the Middle East and no desire whatsoever to stand there having some jerk in a uniform shouting at me and asking to look at the contents of my laptop.

This whole thing about making us dance around airports in our socks and ditching Masafi bottles because they could be bombs (presumably the water bomb is these days considered a credible threat) has long rendered me sore amazed. The IRA's last bomb on the UK mainland weighed a metric tonne, was packed in a lorry and blew out the heart of Manchester, doing £1 billion of damage. The concerted and sustained terrorist campaign waged by the IRA against the might and weight of the UK's civil defence and military over thirty years compares rather oddly to the threat posed by a bunch of bloodthirsty yahoos in Toyota pickups. It's what prompted me to write A Decent Bomber in the first place - that odd juxtaposition of the threat from today's water-bomb terrorism to the constant destruction wreaked in the skies by the IRA, PLO, Abu Nidal, the Red Brigade et al.

We have never been so constrained by, or constantly reminded of, the threat of 'terrorism' as we are today. And the credible threats have never been so slight - particularly when set against the efficiency of modern security apparatus. You might argue that we're safe precisely because that apparatus has stopped us bringing water bottles or unscanned heels onto flights, but in travelling outside the UK I have noticed nobody else out there is really bothering that much. And it'll be interesting to see if the rest of the world believes in the credible threat of a weaponised Kindle being stored in the hold rather than being used to read on a flight...

Reviewing A Decent Bomber

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Quick post, just to share that 'Talking of Books' radio show from last week...

The podcast is linked here.

They quite liked A Decent Bomber, which is nice. Because of Paris and events around it, they reached the perfectly understandable decision not to refer to terrorism or fundamentalism in the programme in an attempt to be sensitive to events taking place in Europe. This left them with the interesting task of reviewing a book about a former terrorist who used to make bombs for a terrorist organisation who is coerced into resuming his old trade by a bunch of Somali and Arab terrorists. Without using the 'T' word...

Have a listen, it's quite fun...

A Decent Bomber And Old Wounds

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cavanagh sighed. ‘No. Go on ahead. What do you want to know?’

‘It’s about your time as a prison officer in the Maze—’

The laugh was more a bark. ‘Well, I didn’t think it was going to be about my time as an ice cream man, now.’

Boyle forced a smile so Cavanagh would hear it. ‘Right enough. Fair play. I’m interested in a prisoner, name of O’Carolan. With you between seventy-eight and eighty-nine.’

‘Swan? I remember him right enough. Big man. Provo.’

‘That’ll be the one.’

‘Bomber, he was. By trade.’

‘You called him Swan?’

‘We did. He used to fold little origami swans. We’d clear them away from his cell every day and give him new paper. We withdrew the privilege when he joined the dirty protest.’

‘How did he react to that?’

‘Nothing. Not a thing. Never said a word about it. He was a strong man, quiet, like.’

‘Any known associates?’

‘You mean was he thick with anyone? They all were. They kept to themselves, right enough. I suppose Cathal Burke, if anyone. Brian MacNamara, for the brief time he was in. They came in together. I’d see them chat a lot on exercise, when that was allowed. It was stopped on account of the protests.’

‘He got full parole, didn’t he? Despite joining the dirty protest?’

‘We recommended that after he came off the protest. He never gave us a moment’s bother, did Swan. Always quiet, always polite. You’d not have him down as a common criminal, a murderer, at all, except that’s just what he was, wasn’t he?’

‘The dirty protest was about changing that status.’

‘You can put any label you like on murder. But he was a killer, right enough.’

‘Thank you Mr Cavanagh.’

‘Any time, Inspector.’

The Northern Irish peace was concluded, you could argue, in 1998 with the Good Friday Peace Agreement, but it wasn't to be until 28 July 2005 the IRA would commit to exclusively non-violent means.

There were any manner of steps towards 1998, and any number of steps after, too. I posted a few days ago about the Good Friday agreement, and Mo Mowlam's heroic role in bringing it to be. It wasn't an easy peace, by any means. Even today, the North - Northern Ireland - has its annual parades, marches and demonstrations. Each one is a potential flash point. Memories run deep and feelings can run high. People still feel and remember pain and communities remain parted along sectarian lines. There are red white and blue towns; there are green white and gold towns. But the twain would tend not to meet.

That's changing, albeit slowly. The 'peace walls' are coming down, they'll all be gone by 2023. It's still fresh ground, the shoots are fragile yet. But - and you must remember I am an incurable optimist - there is enormous hope for the future. Young people who don't remember the bitterness of the past, who can forge new friendships and romances without worrying about which community the other comes from, are increasingly common. Yet there remains a strong strain of Montague and Capulet facing young Romeos and Juliets who want to marry across communities. Even when Sarah and I were married, back in 1991, there was an awful lot of fuss about the fact we were a 'mixed marriage' - and that was in the South.

So is it too soon to open up a can of worms like A Decent Bomber? A novel about a man who was an IRA bomber in his youth - he could hardly be called decent, after all? A friend from a strong Protestant, Unionist tradition walked out on me when she found I had interviewed a former IRA man and current 'Shinner' in researching the book. Walked out leaving me stunned, I have to say.

If feelings run as high over this book as they did with Olives - A Violent Romance, I'd be concerned (Olives led to much silliness and a daft, but nevertheless momentarily disconcerting, death threat). Frankly, the financial benefits even if the book were a runaway bestseller wouldn't be worth having to worry about someone from the extreme edges taking exception to my IRA man or my Unionist copper. Let alone as a self-published marginal little effort. It kept me up at nights while I was writing the book, I have to say. I mean, did I even want to go there? And that thought, in itself, was enough to say to me, yes.

I tried to bring balance to it, to show sides to the story (an Irish saying, 'There are three sides to every story; yours, mine and the right one) and bring my conflicted characters together to face a common enemy that, if anything, brought them together. Remember the old Arab phrase, 'My brother against my cousin, my cousin against the stranger'? Oddly enough, a shared challenge can speed reconciliation.

I dearly wish the book is widely enjoyed by people from both sides of the fence, perhaps even with the odd wry smile. We can only wait and see, can't we?

It's getting perilous close, now. You can still pre-order a copy here.

Qatar Airways, Bobby Sands And A Decent Bomber.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here's a story.

Globe-spanning super-airline Qatar Airways started life as a 'labour flight' operator in 1994 with a couple of ageing planes - I would have sworn they were Lockheed TriStars, but aviation history tells me they were either A310s or a Boeing 767, running routes like Nepal and Khartoum. When the airline was relaunched in 1997, I was duly brought in to shape the relaunch of their inflight magazine, Oryx. This meant going to Doha and speaking to various people, including interviewing a chef who was going to introduce 'live cooking stations' in first class and new CEO Akbar Al Bakar, which was interesting.

Naturally, I was flown there on Qatar Airways. The airport, back then known to most in the UAE only as a destination for a 'visa hop' was a shabby little place with a single worn out luggage carousel (there may have been two). Never a happy flier, I was double unhappy in a plane that seemed to me, to say the least, held together with sealing wax and string. On the flight back, I settled down and buried myself in my book. After a while a swarthy gentleman of Iranian demeanour dumped down next to me, the doors closed and we started taxiing. My new companion was clearly taken with the various accoutrements of flight, exploring the safety card, inflight and puke bag with the joy of a wondering child. His arm was in a sling and after a while he settled, happily picking at the scab encrusting a huge burn on his forearm.

I stayed buried in my book, in the pose English Traveller Who Does Not Wish To Talk.

'Kallum Arabi?' (You speak Arabic?)

Oh noes. 'La. Ana mu kallum Arabi.' (No.)

Delight. 'Enta kallum Arabi queiss!' (You do, you devil! You just did it, see?)

Emphatic. 'Mafi Arabi.' (I really, really, really, really don't speak Arabic. And I don't want to talk to you. At all. Ever.)

I plunged back into my book and we took off. The seat belt lights went off. My neighbour, bored with exposing areas of newly-healed pink skin, tried again. I ignored him. He took to nudging me. This was too much. I rounded on him with a snapped 'Khalas!' (Stoppit or I'll fetch yer one on the nose).

A silence. Then, 'Enta Ingleez?' (Are you by any chance a gentleman of an English persuasion?)

'Na'am.' (I am deeply exasperated by you, but yes, as you ask.)

And then, triumphantly, furiously, it came. 'Bobby Sands GOOD!'

He must have been terribly disappointed at the reaction to The Mother Of All Insults. I was utterly bewildered. How the hell would this bloke even know who Bobby Sands was, let alone to throw the name of this dead IRA hunger striker at an Englishman? What did he expect, that I would wither like the Wicked Witch of the North? Quail at the name of this hero of the global revolution?

Having delivered himself of his Parthian shot, he went away to find someone he could chatter with and left me, blinking and trying to work out the whole Sands connection. Quite apart from anything else, Sands had died a full sixteen years before this, in 1981. It's not like this was current news or anything (current affairs have a funny way of affecting you when you travel around the Middle East. I was thrown out of a shop in Riyadh once because we had helped America to bomb Libya) but Sands was clearly still held in Iran as an example of one who had stood against British Imperialism and triumphed.

That enduring link between the IRA and the Middle East is a great deal less tenuous than this one to my new novel, A Decent Bomber, which publishes next week on the 5th November, to coincide with the anniversary of another man who flipped the digit at British Authority, one Guido Fawkes. You can, indeed should, pre-order the book using this here handy link!

Sectarianism And Decent Bombers

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It was late in the afternoon as Gerald Lynch hopped along the uneven paving that lined Gouraud Street, the heart of Beirut’s bustling Gemayze area. He wore jeans and a leather jacket against the chill spring air, his hands in his pockets as he squeezed between the parked cars.

Gouraud’s bars, as ever, welcomed those who wanted to party and forget the woes of a world where violence and conflict were a distant memory but a constant worry. Orphaned by Belfast’s troubles, Lynch appreciated Beirut’s fragile peace and sectarian divides, the hot embers under the white ash on the surface of a fire that looked, to the casual observer, as if it had gone out. Lynch scowled as he passed a poster carrying Michel Freij’s smiling face, encircled in strong black script: ‘One Leader. One Lebanon.’

From 'Beirut - An Explosive Thriller'

Gerald Lynch features in my first three books, a violent and drunken Northern Irish spy. Well, a well-mannered and teetotal one would be a bit less fun. His appreciation of Lebanon's sectarianism is visceral because it mirrors his own experiences growing up during 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland.

It's not until you drive through a wee township bedecked in fluttering Union Jack pennants, bunting and flags, with kerb stones painted red white and blue and murals on the walls that you begin to appreciate the strength and depth of feeling still in the North. Even the nomenclature is loaded: Northern Ireland or the North - or N. Ireland? I say Derry, you say Londonderry. And the next township down the road will be themed green white and gold, although you won't typically find as much bunting and never painted kerb stones in the Catholic areas. They're just more, well, Irish.

I recall my amazement standing by the 'peace wall' in Belfast (pictured above). Dividing Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods, these walls or 'lines' are found in several places in the north and are mostly higher than the Israeli separation wall. That's pretty mad, no? They're being torn down, but in the meantime have become something of a tourist attraction. Which is at the same time sort of nice and a tad perverse.

The conflation of politics and religion is absolute. Republican Nationalist Catholic, Unionist Loyalist Protestant. The conflict between these two communities goes back centuries, old wounds have never quite healed and unfairnesses never quite been forgiven, let alone forgotten. But in the past twenty years, as in Lebanon, the peace has held. The marching season is an annual incitement, a national holding of breath as everyone in their right minds hopes that it'll pass without incident or a descent into chaos. But with a little give and take, perseverance and a shared will to avoid falling back into the violence and repression, the communities of Northern Ireland have managed to preserve their mutual accommodation. It hasn't all been plain sailing, by any means.

A great deal of the credit for even getting us here belongs to a dead woman. Mo Mowlam was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 1998 and was instrumental in pulling together the Good Friday Peace Agreement of that year. Remarkably, she achieved her feats of diplomacy knowing she had brain cancer, a fact she kept secret until forced to respond to the charming British red top newspapers, who were hurling jibes about her dumpy appearance. Her memoir, Momentum, is an exhilarating read, packed with the personality of a straight-talking, no-nonsense woman of remarkable character. Sadly, insanely, the book is out of print. Reading it was one of my more enjoyable research tasks working on A Decent Bomber.

All of this, inevitably, forms the backdrop to the book. Pat used to make bombs for the IRA and doesn't want to do it again. His old mate Brian MacNamara is in politics these days and doesn't need bombs going off, particularly as MacNamara's boss, Sean Driscoll, is standing for election. Former 'freedom fighters', they'd rather not get involved in Pat's upset apple cart and the looting of arms caches* they'd pretended weren't there any more. And then there's Boyle, the boy who watched his da shot by the IRA, who turns into an angry copper...

MacNamara pressed his hands together between his legs. ‘There were plenty big daft lads. On both sides. We depended on them.’

‘Well this one shot my Da. Dropped him there in the garden. Bang. Not even bang bang. Just bang.’

‘I’m sorry.’ MacNamara struggled to still his twisting hands, to lay them on his knees. He caught Boyle’s sideways glower.

Boyle focused back on the road. ‘Sure you are.’

Pat's loss from 'the troubles' still hurts him today. So does Boyle's. They find themselves pitched together, working to face a new threat from outside that, ultimately, unites them. I had never intended the book to be a moral tale about reconciliation, but it's in there somewhere. Inevitably, someone, somewhere will take exception to something I've written in the book, because passions still ignite and feelings still run deep. Twenty years, as anyone in Lebanon will tell you, can pass in the seeming blink of an eye.

But the vast majority of people in both communities never wants to go back. That alone is reason for enormous optimism. And if you do find something you don't like in the book, get in touch. I'll be happy to talk about it. Because, let's face it, when we stop talking is when we're in trouble...

* Demonstrating, once again, that truth is stranger than fiction, two separate arms cache finds were made in Ireland and England earlier this year. Given I'd worried about the unlikely nature of this aspect of my fiction, I was oddly a little relieved when they turned up!

A Decent Bomber And The Wilfulness of Characters

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A gentle tapping on his cheek. A wipe of wet cloth on his forehead. The awareness of light though his swollen lids. An insistent voice, deep, repeated his name. ‘Mister Quinlan, Mister Quinlan.’ Accented, the title sounded more like mist air.

   He took a deep, juddering breath and tried to focus. His hands flared pain. He tasted blood, his mouth dry. Cool ceramic touched his lips and he leaned forwards to sip gratefully at the icy water. His shattered ribs grated and forced him to cry out, bubbling the water. He spilled a pink dribble down his sodden, spattered shirt.

   'Can you hear me Mister Quinlan?’ Mist Air Queen Larne ‘There has been a mistake. These men have been foolish. Do you understand?’

    Quinlan nodded. He could just make out the face peering into his own, a look of concern on the dark-skinned features. He tried to speak, his fat lips throbbed and tore, a stab of pain. ‘W-who?’

   ‘My name doesn’t matter, Mister Quinlan. Some call me The Accountant. It is but a conceit. You are safe, now. Tell me, who is the bomb maker, please? The one who made the big bombs?’

   Quinlan groaned. He tried to raise his head. ‘Big?’ He saw stars, felt a deep lassitude. The cold cloth was pressed to his brow again.

   ‘You remember? The bombs your people made for London and Manchester. People still talk of them. The very, very big bombs. Boom.’

   Christ, but that was twenty year and more ago! Quinlan wanted to say. But the cat had his tongue.

   ‘Come. You know who made them. Tell me his name, Mister Quinlan.’

   It came to him. Of course it did. Jesus, but that was Pat. Dear old Pat.

   ‘Pat,’ Quinlan croaked. ‘Pat O’Carolan.’

   ‘Where is he?’

   He tried to grin. Ah, these people. Stop, now. ‘Tipp. South Tipp.’ Another beautiful sip of water offered to his beaten lips.

   Bliss.

   ‘Where is Tip, please?’

   ‘Tipperary. The-the Republic.’ He was drooling, sloppy-mouthed. The pain clamoured, in and out of focus in waves, his battered nerves shrieked every time he moved his broken body.

   ‘And what is his code word?’

   ‘I-I don’t know any c-code—’

   The blow to his cheek came fast and with the hard edge of the man’s hand. Quinlan’s jaw crunched. Pain blossomed in his mouth, both old ache and new sharp. His tied arms stiffened and his bloody hands pulsed agony. He moaned and spat out a tooth.

   He sagged against his restraints, snivelling as he tried to breathe through the bloody mucus filling his nose and mouth. ‘Dan.’ He moaned. ‘Breen. Code word. Dan Breen. Danbreen.’

The opening scene of A Decent Bomber was actually the last piece of the book I wrote. The final pass of a number of edits, this one 'filled in' a number of scenes and events I had lazily passed over in the original writing. Sometimes it's these very events you take for granted which actually contain the most important bits in developing the book. In this case, the old version of the book opened with Pat hearing something in his yard and then two Irish Republican politicians discussing Quinlan's fate.

It wasn't enough. Quinlan had to get it, and bad, and we had to be there with him and share his treatment at the hands of some very bad people. I didn't know he had wee girls or a wife called Deirdre or that his mother had died, but somehow in the space of a couple of pages, Quinlan acquired these things (as well as a number of particularly nasty injuries). I did love Mist Air Queen Larne, too. I'm sure it's wrong to enjoy your own writing like this, a sort of literary onanism.

Similarly, Pat's niece Orla was never meant to have a girlfriend, a relationship that throws her life into turmoil. Orla had never considered herself to be you know, different and yet here she was falling for another girl she met at a party. This whole development was the last thing on my mind and I do not for the life of me know where it came from, it just happened. One minute she's on a train looking out of the window and twizzling her red hair, reflected in the window and then, bam, she's falling for another girl, trying to come to terms with this newly awakened sexuality and wondering how she's going to break the news to her Uncle Pat.

It's odd how these things can develop. That relationship, unintended in my original telling, becomes crucial to the story of A Decent Bomber. Orla, already in a state of considerable confusion, gets treated pretty badly in the scheme of things. Not only is she confronted by her strange feelings for another woman, she finds out her beloved uncle Pat isn't quite what he seemed to be. The rock and anchor she seeks in her new turbulence turns out to be a catalyst for complete chaos.

Boyle wriggled his way into the story as an uninvited guest as well. And nobody was as surprised at the way his love life turns out as I was. One minute he's in his office and the next my fingers had tapped out a scene that was the last thing from my mind. I actually sat back and questioned what the hell had just gone on there. I hadn't meant it to happen at all and then found myself having to deal with the consequences - just as Boyle must have had to have done.

Sometimes these things happen. Characters do stuff they're not supposed to, grow a life for themselves and make their own decisions. You just have to go along with it and let them do their thing. It often works out rather wonderfully - in Shemlan, for instance, it led to the whole glorious car chase across a frozen Baltic sea. I didn't even know the Baltic froze over, let alone that there were seasonal ice roads connecting the Estonian mainland with its islands. In A Decent Bomber, that unplanned relationship of Orla's ended up resolving the whole book.

What goes around comes around, in writing books as in life...

A Decent Bomber is currently available on Amazon.com and all decent book outlets on pre-order, publishing on November 5th 2015. Go and do it now, don't put it off. You know it makes sense...

The UK Mainland's Biggest Bombs

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Róisín handed the joint to Orla, who shook her head. ‘No thanks. Not my thing.’ She waved her glass. ‘Are you a student too?’

‘Sure, I am.’

‘What you studying?’

‘Terrorists. You?’

Orla searched Róisín’s face, but it was without guile. ‘Animal husbandry. How do you mean, terrorists?’

‘Just that. Terror studies.’

‘You’re kidding me. That’s a course?’

Róisín laughed, shaking her head. ‘What’s so odd about it? You look like someone just slapped your arse.’

‘I suppose it seems strange that someone would want to… well, that. Oh, I don’t know. Don’t we see enough about them every day?’

‘This nation was founded on terrorism. If it wasn’t for Michael Collins, Dan Breen and the likes of them there’d be no Ireland. We’d still be a British colony.’

Now we're into dangerous territory. Writing A Decent Bomber, I was well aware that I was going to get caught up with a thriller sub-genre that has emerged over the past decade - evil terrorist (preferably Arab) nicks big explody thing and threatens the free and decent world until our square-jawed steely-eyed hero takes him down. That's no way what this book's about and I would hope most fervently it's a million leagues smarter than that. And, for me as well as most average readers, 'it's about terrorists' is a turnoff. As Orla says, who wants to talk about that?

And yet the idea of a retired terrorist who represents an era when terrorism was 'real' coming up against the bandits and insurgents who inhabit the failed states left in the wake of our attempts at imperialism drew me.

What on earth do I mean by 'real'?

I remember, growing up in the '70s and '80s, how life went on despite the IRA. There was even something of a 'spirit' about it - they're not going to grind us down, matey. But these days, for some reason, whenever some hopeless numb-nut puts a bomb in the heel of his shoe that doesn't quite go off, or finds a liquid explosive combination, we're all made dance around airports in our socks and wave our clear plastic bags in the air. We've never been safer, our governments tell us and yet we have never been so threatened they claim in the next breath.

We're so cowed, we've spent years helping mendacious duty free companies claim back our VAT because we're just, well, compliant in airports. It's for our own good, after all.

Terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s was international, multinational. We had the PLO, the Red Brigades, Baader Meinhof, ETA and lots, lots more. Airline hijackings - and bombings - in the 1960s, '70s and '80s took place all over the world. There were over 40 incidents of terrorism in the air in the 1970s alone. One of them, Abu Nidal bringing down a Gulf Air jet (GF 771 in case you were interested) in 1983 with the loss of all on board, took place in Jebel Ali. Rather close to home! At the same time, on the ground, the world was rocked by waves of terrorist violence.

The IRA's campaigns in Ireland and mainland Britain were relentless and sustained, prosecuted in the face of an overwhelming military and police presence and the focused resource of a fully functioning, technologically advanced first world power. Despite the full machinery of the British security services, the IRA detonated a number of bombs on the British mainland, including the two largest explosions since WWII, the infamous London Docklands bomb and the Manchester bomb.

The Docklands bomb killed two people and did an amazing amount of damage. It weighed over a ton. The Manchester bomb wounded over 200 people and blew out the heart of Manchester, causing over a million pounds' worth of damage. It, too, weighed over a ton. Both were timed bombs packed into vans. The bombers were never apprehended - certainly not in relation to the bombings.

And we're shuffling around in our socks when we fly because of heel bombs.

So I thought the meeting between 'new' terror and 'old' terror might be interesting. You can clearly (and really, really should, you know) find out what happens by clicking here.

Uncle Pat And Decent Bombing

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The phone rang. For some reason its peal stilled him. He lifted the handset slowly. The sacred heart lamp was guttering. He’d have to get a new one next time he went down the road.

  ‘Hello?’

  The voice on the line had a hint of American. ‘This is Patrick O’Carolan?’

  ‘It is, sure.’

  ‘Hello, Mr O’Carolan. Your code word is Dan Breen. Could you confirm you understand me?’

  There was something else under the American note in the voice, a hint of something deep and dark. Pat’s tongue felt double the size, his voice thick. ‘Yes.’ Damn his hesitancy, it sounded like he had a stutter. He mustered his wits; his eyes squeezed shut to block out the nightmares of the past. ‘Yes, I confirm.’ As he spoke, his mind shrieked: No, tell them no. Tell them you don’t know what the fuck they’re on about and to leave me and my niece alone.

It all started with Sarah's uncle Pat. He's a mild-mannered, gentle man who keeps a small herd of milk cows on a wee farm up on the margins of the Cummermore Bog in South Tipperary. He likes tea. As a younger man, he was a bit of a Republican. The Irish kind, not the looney gun-totin' American type. Being a bit 'green' as a lad hardly marks you out in South Tipperary, you understand.

I've long teased Sarah with dark mutterings about how uncle Pat's sitting on an IRA arms cache. It's amusingly incongruous if you know Pat.

And then one day it hit me. Hang on. What if he WAS? And what if bad people came calling? Really bad people. And what if he had a past? And what if...?

I started to throw the idea around and pick it up by its ears to see if it squealed. I did a little research and yes, it could work. I worried a bit about what I was setting out to do to Pat, the placid, kind man with a Pioneer badge who'd done nothing to deserve being turned into a gun-toting leviathan. And then I got over it and started writing. That's the trouble with this writing thing, it tears away your morality and leaves you stealing people, plucking this trait from here, that sentence from there.

Don't ever chat to a writer. Seriously. You just can't trust 'em. You never know where your unplucked nasal hair, kipper tie and Bootle accent is going to turn up next...

Stalled. A Writer's Nightmare.

I've stalled on the new book. I've written not one word since before the Summer hols. I made some notes and stuff in Belfast and Newry, I sat down for a long chat with a 'Shinner' MP and former IRA man while I was in 'Noori', that fine town in 'Norn Iron', an engagement organised by my lovely Sister in Law and fascinating in so many ways. But I haven't actually been, you know, writing.

'So you served 15 years of a 27 year sentence in Long Kesh. The Maze.'
'That's right.'
'The H Blocks.'
'No, before them. It was Nissen huts, then, segregated on sectarian lines. We used to pass notes across each others' huts. So even the Unionists would pass our notes, and we would pass theirs.'
'Did you get time off for good behaviour?'
'I doubt it. We burned the prison down.'

It's not 'writer's block', that's something different altogether. It's a bit like work on Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, which was stalled by my decision to publish Olives and Beirut myself. While all that went on, poor old Shemlan took a back seat, unfinished at around the halfway mark. But I went on going to Beirut and visiting the village, the Mountain and other locations in the book. I just didn't write anything.

When I finally sat down to finish Shemlan, jacked into volume 11 death metal and Estonian plain chant, it flew like a jet-propelled Teflon coated flying thing in a vacuum. Hang on, how do things fly in a vacuum if there's no pressure of air or gravity or other opposing force? Help!

So I'm not really angsting about the lack of progress. Things happen in their time and this one obviously needs to 'bed down' a bit before I go on. I trust my instincts well enough by now not to try and keep pushing if my head won't be pushed. The novel's at a crossroads and I need to go back over it, test it against the stuff in my head and correct it before starting construction work again.

I'll know when I'm ready. Life's busy, there's so much going on, distractions are flying like Teflon coated flying things gravitating towards a large body.

In the meantime, any time I get a few moments to sit down to write, I'm ending up scribbling blog posts instead. The paucity of such posts testifies to the lack of time in general.

Where does it all go?