Cuchculan
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There is a bench in a nice quiet park. You can spend one hour on that bench with anybody. Could be a historical figure. A musician. A loved one. Who would you pick and why?
I guess I like interesting figures. People who can hold my attention. Back at the start of the 1980's in Northern Ireland a number of people went on hungerstrike. The first one to die, after 66 days, who more or less became the face of the hungerstrikers was a man called Bobby Sands. At the time Thatcher was the PM in the UK and she was told not to let Sands die. This had a lot got to do with the troubles in the North of Ireland. But Sands, at that time, was really a nobody. All others who went on hungerstrike would have been in the IRA. Sands had never committed a terrorist act or even harmed anybody. He was in the IRA. But he was in prison for robbery. There were no set times you were sent to prison for. Diplock courts. Which meant you were sent to prison and Lord knows when they would set you free. But he was an amazing poet. A great thinker. A man with a mind like no other. To be able to sit with him and ask him, based on what we know today, was it all worth it? Worth dying for? There were far bigger names than him in that prison. But they started refusing food, lasted a few days, then gave up on what they were doing. He more or less put some shape into the whole thing. Put a better structure around it all. The other prisoners knew him because nightly who would recite his poems out loud in the dark for the other prisoners. You could imagine sitting in a cold damp prison cell in the dark. Alone with your thoughts. And then this voice would begin to echo around the wing of the prison. ' The Rhyme of Time '. From nobody he became an instant Martyr. The only person he ever killed was himself. But was it all worth it? Did it gain anything?
I guess I like interesting figures. People who can hold my attention. Back at the start of the 1980's in Northern Ireland a number of people went on hungerstrike. The first one to die, after 66 days, who more or less became the face of the hungerstrikers was a man called Bobby Sands. At the time Thatcher was the PM in the UK and she was told not to let Sands die. This had a lot got to do with the troubles in the North of Ireland. But Sands, at that time, was really a nobody. All others who went on hungerstrike would have been in the IRA. Sands had never committed a terrorist act or even harmed anybody. He was in the IRA. But he was in prison for robbery. There were no set times you were sent to prison for. Diplock courts. Which meant you were sent to prison and Lord knows when they would set you free. But he was an amazing poet. A great thinker. A man with a mind like no other. To be able to sit with him and ask him, based on what we know today, was it all worth it? Worth dying for? There were far bigger names than him in that prison. But they started refusing food, lasted a few days, then gave up on what they were doing. He more or less put some shape into the whole thing. Put a better structure around it all. The other prisoners knew him because nightly who would recite his poems out loud in the dark for the other prisoners. You could imagine sitting in a cold damp prison cell in the dark. Alone with your thoughts. And then this voice would begin to echo around the wing of the prison. ' The Rhyme of Time '. From nobody he became an instant Martyr. The only person he ever killed was himself. But was it all worth it? Did it gain anything?
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