September 1979

I don’t remember much of the actual Papal mass in Dublin 25 years ago. Our vantage point in section '24 purple' was only about two miles from the altar, and squinting through eastern health board spectacles didn’t reveal more than a huge cross. If you throw in the barely decipherable tannoy system coupled with the Pope’s broken English, the mass becomes a lot of “what did he say Ma?” But I do remember the build up for different reasons. I was only just entering double figures, but on that day I realized I could annoy the bejesus out of people.

September 1979, and for the entire month all the talk in the shops was about him. He was coming, himself, to Ireland, isn’t it great? It took a while for a 10 year old to assimilate what exactly was happening. My mother was not overly religious; she kind of pretended to be. Mostly out of fear that myself and my younger brothers would grow up to be godless anarchists or even worse, communists. But our next door neighbour, Missus Hartigan was just short of being God’s special envoy to Finglas and her boss was on the way.

Missus Hartigan was older than my thirty five year old mother, probably only in her early forties but she always seemed old. Her shock of silver hair was either in curlers or in some kind of permanent Don King-esque afro, she was small in stature but big somehow, robust is the best description. When it was announced that John Paul Deuce was coming to Ireland to say mass in the Phoenix Park she must have thought that God was personally rewarding her with the holiest of masses in what was virtually, her back yard.

Apparently getting to the Phoenix Park (which is roughly a half hour walk from our house) for a twelve o’clock mass requires a ten year old to be awoken at 5 am. Missus Hartigan had taken over our pre dawn kitchen and with the efficiency of Colin Powell was going about organizing my fear stricken mother and her own twelve year old daughter to prepare more sandwiches than ‘Father Teds” Mrs. Doyle could even imagine.

My mother had dumped me on the sofa in the living room with a bowl of Weetabix next to David Hartigan aged 8 ½ . We did our usual swapping of eastern health board glasses to confirm how screwed up each others eyes are and argued whether his cousin, John, would ever be any good as Arsenal’s full back. Our house was a Man United house, his, by virtue of his mother’s adoration of Dave O’Leary and the fact that her own nephew was on the books, was an Arsenal house. They had beaten us in the cup final that May and the wounds still smarted.

I wandered into mission control to slip my empty Weetabix bowl in the sink when I caught sight of what was going on. The magnitude of this was far beyond my comprehension. Huge yellow flasks were being filled with boiling water from three simultaneously boiled kettles (two electric ones and the backup one for the gas cooker in case of a power cut, which in the seventies was almost an everyday occurrence). Brown soda loaves were being carefully wrapped in tea towels. Tins of ‘Picnic’ pink salmon were being drained and spread onto buttered batch loaf. Even at such a young age I couldn’t help making a smart remark about loaves and fishes, “Is the Pope going to use these sandwiches to feed everyone?” One sore ear later I was ordered to get my duffel coat on.

My youngest brother was only 2 at the time, so his go-car pram was used for transportation of toddler and foodstuffs. A square sticker bearing the number 24 and the colour purple was slapped onto my duffel and out into the darkness we went to see the Holy Father.

It was bloody freezing outside. I don’t think my mother was fully awake because I can’t remember her saying anything, but then again Mother Hartigan was in full control. This was her gig. No two ways about it. We walked, teeth chattering down to the valley by the River Tolka to take the back road to Cabra and down to the park. I’ll never forget the scene when we came down into the valley from our estate. The sun was just coming up and a heavy mist was rolling in off the river, David and myself were walking behind the two women. As we descended to the valley hundreds of Catholics streamed in great lines out of the housing estates all headed for the valley. It was like a mass baptism, and unbelievably, on looking behind us, it was Missus Hartigan who was leading about 3 hundred people (mostly women and kids) down to the river! And I swear, as I live and breathe, when the sun came up and shone through her grey Afro, you could just about make out the halo.

By the time I was ten it had already become evident that Missus Hartigan and myself had a distinct personality clash. She loved structure and organization. Schedules and order. Her house was timetabled. Her husband was a probation officer so he worked regular 9 to 5 shifts and everything revolved around that. Dinner was on the table at 5:30pm. Everyone sat down every weekday for dinner. David was called in from being in goal at 5:25pm. And that was him in for the night. The Angelus was on at six. News at 6:01. Tea was at 7:30pm. Kids were in bed by 9 at the latest.

My father, on the other hand, drove the 37 bus and was on either “earlies” or “lates”. “Earlies” meant he started at 5:30 and finished around half two. “Lates” meant he started about 3 and finished at midnight. In those days, those were the only two shifts on route 37 and they floated through the weekends as well. On the day of JP2’s visit, my father was on “earlies” so he was driving his bus up and down the Navan road while his holiness was kissing the tarmac at Dublin airport. This alternating shift pattern meant there was no real routine in our house and this antagonized the hell out of Missus Hartigan.

I’d be eating my dinner with a Famous Five book in one hand while I was walking around the kitchen table. I never sat down. Ever. Even watching television I’d lie on the floor. I broke hundreds of chairs in school by either swinging or slouching on them till they gave way. I never closed presses or doors after me. Ever. I had too much going on in my head. I had homework to do, that half of Finglas was waiting to copy. I had books that had to be finished. I had football games to play and this weeks Roy of the Rovers comic to get through before I swapped it with Will Deasy for his “Victor”. I hadn’t time for little things. I lived on questions and solving mysteries and this is what annoyed her the most. Her beliefs were based on blind faith while in my world everything had to have a logical explanation.

The walk to the park was amazing. Once you got past the freezing conditions, even a ten year old could see that something was up. The leaves along Nephin road were all crispy and brown and the procession grew even more as we left Cabra, the singing of hymns had started, and my bet was that Missus Hartigan had instigated them. My old man drove by us on the Navan Road in his bus and beeped the horn and waved. It was weird seeing him at work, but everything about that day was surreal.

It was easy to find out where to go once you were in the park. They had marked the altar with a huge cross. It was getting more surreal by the minute. We were herded into little compounds that were associated to the colour and number on our stickers. The little compounds were wooden pens that were a cross between animal enclosures and a concentration camp. The two deckchairs that were hanging on the back of little Andrew’s go-car were unfolded and the women sat down for a cup of tea. The mass wouldn’t be starting for hours. The pope hadn’t even kissed the ground at the airport yet.

It was a good job I skied a ‘half-read’ Famous Five book in my duffel. This kind of boredom, waiting, was my worst nightmare, without that mystery novel I would have been sent of to an asylum before noon, and Missus Hartigan was reveling in this. “Now sit down on the blanket and be good”. For eight flipping hours! Then it happened. Not the arrival of the Polish Pope. The inevitable boil over of the years of simmering frictions between Missus Hartigan and myself.

She pulled out a small leather purse. “What’s that for?”. She was getting holier by the minute, “These are my medals, David and Maire’s communion medals, and my rosary beads”. “Why did you bring them?” seemed an innocent enough question. “To get them blessed of course,” any more pious and we were going to have to ordain her right here. “But aren’t they blessed already?” Again, a straightforward enquiry. “Ah! But only by the priest, not by the Pope”. Hmmmmm! “So, how do you get to be the Pope?” She took the bait. “Well, after you’re ordained you’re a priest, then you can become a Monsignor, then a Bishop, then a Cardinal and then The Pope. That’s the way it works”. She still didn’t see it coming. “So what you mean is, The Pope was a priest first, and the priest that blessed your medals and rosary beads could someday become Pope, so what’s the difference who blesses them, they are all only priests and the priest that blessed them could someday be Pope and unless Jesus blessed them it doesn’t rally make a difference, and…”. Halfway through this sentence, my mother moved her hand in vain towards my mouth, almost in slow motion. Her head shook from side to side while her lips were mouthing the word “No” but no sound was coming out. Missus Hartigan was purple, like Violet Beauregard in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. God knows what would have happened if my mother hadn’t whisked me away for a time out.

I was picked up by my mother and we walked towards the toilets. “You shouldn’t upset Missus Hartigan, this is her day”, my mother said in her soft disappointed way. “I’m sorry Mam, but I just wanted to know why she brought her medals, did you bring my communion medal?” I offered as way of a truce. She couldn’t resist smiling down at me with my dog eared paperback when she knowingly gave me ammunition for the future “Nope. But ‘Famous Five go to Smugglers Top’ is going to be a hell of a lot holier than the Bible in her house”.