Month: July 2019

Whether we like it or not, tattoos are a feature of modern life. They’re a common sight. Some are small, discreet and barely noticeable, while others are obvious and difficult to avoid, covering large amounts of skin like human graffiti.

As a young lad, I don’t remember seeing too many. In those days they were mostly limited to sailors and fishermen and they were usually located on the upper arm and covered by a shirt sleeve.

Many believe they should have been left there but times have changed. Anyone can have one now and for some people, it’s a case of the more the merrier. It’s sometimes referred to as body art and footballers, like David Beckham, have helped to make it fashionable.

To my mind, sticking a tattoo on your body is the same as branding an animal except that the branding iron has been swapped for a needle, and a parlour is used instead of a barn. Although when you see some of them, you could be excused for thinking that they were applied by a blind farmer with a pitch-fork in a hay shed.

Originally, animals were branded for identification purposes. The owner put his initials on the rump of his cows so nobody else could lay claim to them. That made perfect sense at a time when rustling cattle was big business but why that needed to transfer to humans is beyond me.

Anyway, we already have ways to identify each other. We have names, birth certs and passports that mark us out for who we are. Passports are easier to get and are a less painful form of property marking so there is no need to be jabbing ourselves with inky pins.

Many disagree though, because body art is now big business and has come a long way from its humble beginnings.

The actual word tattoo is derived from the Tahitian word tattau, which means, “to mark.” Early tattooing involved cutting the skin with a knife and packing dirt or ashes from the fire into the cut to discolour it permanently, creating tribal markings.

Some say that it began in China and that sailors discovered it during their travels to the Orient. Sailors often passed the long hours at sea by “pricking” designs into themselves, probably out of boredom. They sometimes used gunpowder mixed with ink, to stain the skin, because Chinese believed gunpowder had magical powers of long life and protection.

There have been many times in my life when I’ve been bored but I have never considered cutting a chunk out of my skin and packing the wound with dirt. The person who came up with this idea must have had a great imagination and a high pain threshold.

Having a tattoo is a personal choice but there is a difference between having something small on your upper arm and walking around looking like you should be housed in the National Art Gallery. Those who support it say that it’s a form of expression but if you cover your body to the extent that you can’t see any skin then what is it exactly that you are trying to express?

A lot of it has to do with personal taste and personality, and there will always be extroverts who have a desire to be seen to be different. Like the Teddy Boys, The Goths and The Punks back in the day with the spikey green hair and the pins in their noses.

Some people will always want to stand out and body art is one way to achieve that. The more outrageous the tattoo, the bigger the statement. But when you reach the point where everyone is looking outrageous, doesn’t that kind of defeat the whole purpose of trying to be original? It’s difficult to be unique if every second person is covered in as much war paint as you are.

Sitting on a beach recently. I noticed that there were several girls who had what looked like poems tattooed on various parts of their bodies. What is the protocol for the rest of us regarding these? Are we supposed to read them, or should we ignore them altogether for fear of being called a pervert?

It could a bit awkward trying to explain what exactly you were doing on your knees next to a sun bed trying to read the poetry tattooed on a girl’s thigh if she suddenly starts screaming.

There is another consideration too. If you’re going to permanently mark your body, then you need to be pretty sure that you like the design because it’s there for life. Getting rid of it is difficult and can be painful.

There is also the fact that as a person gets older the body changes shape. We develop wrinkles and we may start to sag a bit here and there so the original tattoo may not be quite as glamorous as it was when it started out.

What began as something exotic on your back might look completely different later in life when it’s hanging down your backside. Expressing your undying love to Mary may seem like a romantic gesture at the time but that could get a little awkward if you end up with Joan.

Alcohol influences many decisions to get a tattoo. It’s not uncommon to hear of someone waking up with a hangover to discover that his body has a new feature. Drunk or sober, when deciding to get a tattoo, it’s important to ensure that the person wielding the needle is familiar with the English language.

One poor unfortunate had a large tattoo drawn down the full length of his forearm in big letters; ‘No Regerts.’ Now, it’s quite possible that he has no regerts but I suspect that he is very sorry.

I’m not very squeamish, but I don’t like looking at cuts on my own body. I’d rather have a broken bone any day because I can’t cope with the sight of an open wound on myself. A break is sore, but you usually can’t see it under the skin and that’s fine. But when I see a cut on myself, I always imagine death is not far away.

When my daughter, Vicki, was very young, she cut her knee getting out of a swimming pool.  We were on holidays in Spain at the time and there was a piece of a broken tile near the edge of the pool and as she climbed out, it sliced her open. It wasn’t a pretty sight. It was very deep, and you could see the bone.

She was crying as she hobbled over to the sun bed where my wife was sitting, with blood pouring out of the wound. My wife took one look at it and promptly passed out. I wrapped a towel around the wound and carried her to reception where we did a quick patch up job. Then we got a taxi to the hospital where she was stitched up properly.

I can deal with the blood and guts stuff. Having spent over 35 years as a policeman, I got to see plenty of it, and it doesn’t bother me once it’s not mine. There was a time when I had a fear of hospitals though.

It was back in the Chernobyl days when we used to drive trucks in and out of Belarus and Western Russia. It was always a worry that one of us would require medical attention out there and many of the hospitals we visited were basic to say the least and we didn’t want to end up in one of them.

I was in the accident and emergency department in one of those hospitals once and the first thing I noticed was this poor character lying in bed on a drip. The drip was hanging from a nail that was sticking out of a piece of wood and the whole thing looked like it had just come out of a rubbish skip.

The doctors and nurses were working under terrible conditions and did their best for the patients, but we had no desire to occupy one of their beds. Considering the amount of time we spent out there over the years, we were very lucky to have had only a few minor mishaps.

My own worst experience was when I got a touch of food poisoning in Belarus and I was really feeling very ill. We were sleeping on the floor of a day care centre at the time and I was sweating profusely one miniute and frozen with the cold the next and I just wanted to die.

A little old lady who was looking after the place for the night saw me and must have guessed what was wrong. She produced a small bottle and while she hadn’t a word of English, it was obvious she wanted to spoon something into me. I was in no condition to care, so I took it and off she went.

Ten miniutes later, there was another nuclear explosion only this time it was inside my body. I hurried to the bathroom and remained there for some time and without going in to too many details, I was a lot lighter when I came out. I went off to sleep and when I woke up the following day, I was feeling a bit delicate but much improved. My new friend obviously knew what she was doing.

They’re tough people in that part of the world and one person who typifies that, is a guy by the name of Leonid Rogozov. In 1961, the 27 year-old was part of a twelve-man Russian team on an Antarctic expedition. He was the team medic and a qualified surgeon, but he fell ill, and his condition was getting worse.

He had a lot of pain down his side and he soon diagnosed that it was his appendix. He knew from experience that if he wasn’t treated properly, there was a chance he could die.

Going to hospital was out of the question. The trip from Russia had taken 35 days by boat and flying him out was impossible because of the foul weather. The only solution was to perform the surgery himself and it would have to be done without general anaesthetic because he needed to be completely awake.

He didn’t know if it was even physically possible to do this to himself, but his preference was to die trying rather than do nothing.

He gave other team members a crash course in operating theatre procedure and showed them how to revive him if he passed out. He showed them the various instruments he would be asking for and how to inject him if he required adrenalin.

He gave himself a local anaesthetic into the tummy, but the rest of the procedure had to be done without any further medication. He planned to use a mirror held by one of his assistants, but he found he was getting disoriented and so decided to carry on by feel instead. In his own account, he says that he just switched into surgeon mode and got on with the job.

He almost passed out a few times but managed to hold on until he removed the appendix but then he had to stitch himself up. The whole episode lasted for two hours and then he took some antibiotics and sleeping pills and went into a deep sleep.

He made a full recovery and returned to his normal duties just two weeks later.

Makes me look like a complete wimp.

Back in the seventies when I was a teenager, not too many of us had cars. We walked everywhere and getting a taxi was always the last thing on our minds. We probably didn’t have enough money to pay for one anyway and the few bob we did have, would have been earmarked for a pint.

A buddy of mine had a Vespa scooter. I can’t remember what he paid for it but whatever it cost, it was too much. Somebody saw him coming. We spent more time pushing the thing around the town than we did riding it. It got to the stage where I would regularly refuse a ride home on it because it was easier to walk.

For some reason that is lost on me now, we decided to take it to Ballyferriter, beyond Dingle in West Kerry one time. I can’t remember what time we set out, but I do know that it was about 2am by the time we got there. It was pre-mobile phone days so there were some people waiting for us who were beginning to get a little concerned.

For a lot of the journey, there were sparks flying out of the back of the scooter and these became more noticeable as it got dark. It was also making some strange noises almost like it was breaking wind. It struggled to go uphill and we knew we were in trouble when it began to have difficulty going downhill too.

When we reached the outskirts of Dingle, it had a massive heart attack and died. We reminisced briefly about the good times we had with it and then promptly threw it in the ditch. We decided to hitch hike the rest of the way but unfortunately for us, it was gone midnight and traffic was non-existent, so we ended up walking the remainder of the journey. It was around 2am by the time we got there, completely wrecked, cold and tired.

My friend graduated to four wheels after that and invested in a Morris Minor. He must have bought it from the same guy who sold him the scooter. This thing broke down so often that we carried a lump of timber in the boot to prop up the bonnet while we rendered first aid to the engine.

Cars were very basic in those days. Heating was flimsy at best so, as a rule, you generally needed to wear as much clothing in the car as you would if you were out walking. They were draughty and noisy as well because insulation was scarce and if you had a radio that meant you had money. In all honesty that Morris Minor was only a small step above a wheelbarrow.

For some reason it always seemed to pack up during the hours of darkness when there was little chance of getting help from a passing motorist. One time we were about two miles from home when the fan belt disintegrated. We walked home and robbed a pair of grans tights and trudged all the way back to where the car was and manufactured a temporary fan belt from the tights and managed to get the car home.

On another occasion, we went to Dungarvan. In hindsight, taking the Morris Minor on an enormous trip like that was asking for trouble. On the way back home, in the dark of course, the rain came down, so, naturally the windscreen wipers failed.

As we were going through Midleton, the exhaust completely detached itself from the underneath of the car and landed on the main street. The noise from the car was enough to disturb people sleeping in Youghal. We eventually got the car home and that was that.

His next car was a Morris 1100 and I did my driving test in it and that was another experience. The car I had lined up for the test became unavailable at the last miniute, so I was in dire need of a replacement. Looking back on it, I had a cheek turning up for the test in the Morris, but I had youth on my side back then and it didn’t worry me too much, but the car had a few defects.

For starters, the front passenger seat was broken and was sitting on the floor. To counteract that, we put some concrete blocks under it and covered the whole thing with a car rug. The gear stick was about two feet long and it constantly vibrated and moved from side to side and it could hurt your knee if it gave you a slap which it regularly did. Every now and then it would dip as if it was trying to escape through the floor.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it was either take a chance with this car or cancel the test, so I decided to go ahead.

On the day of the test, the examiner came out to the car with me and walked around it. I think the road tax may have been out of date and I seem to remember him mentioning something about the condition of one or two of the tyres. Things took a turn for the worse when he sat in beside me and announced; “I shouldn’t even be getting into this car.”

That didn’t do too much to inspire confidence that was sadly lacking already. I fired up the engine and started to move off when the gear stick began its war dance. Moving violently from side to side and then dipping, which the examiner obviously found a bit distracting because we were no sooner out the gap onto the road, when he told me to turn around. Surprisingly, I had failed.

On the positive side, he never complained about his seat.

There was an incident in Cobh recently where a local man was bitten on the face by a dog. I’m told that the man was patting the dog when it suddenly turned on him and left him with a number of puncture marks to the skin. The matter was reported to the gardai so we can’t say too much more about it for now.

I have come across other examples of uncontrolled dogs behaving badly in public too, which leads me to wonder if our local authorities are doing enough to enforce the Control of Dogs Act?

I listened to a woman as she described the moment her dog was mauled to death as she walked along Dollymount Strand in Dublin. She was walking her dog on the beach at about 8am when it was attacked by two bigger dogs. They came out of the sand dunes and attacked the smaller dog and she said they were holding him down by the neck and tearing into him.

She broke a stick off the offending dogs, but they wouldn’t let go. The owner of the bigger dogs in this case was nowhere to be seen. The attackers eventually ran away. She brought her dog to the vet who told her that he had never seen such horrific injuries and unfortunately there was no hope for her pet.

It was a terrifying ordeal for this unfortunate woman but it’s not as uncommon as you might think.

Just a few months ago, a similar thing happened in San Francisco when another family pet was mauled to death in a park by two large dogs that were off their leashes. The owner was taking his dog for a walk when two larger dogs quickly approached and started to attack while their owner never got out of his car.

That pet was also brought to the vet, but nothing could be done to save the dog.

Another dog was mauled to death on New Brighton Beach in the UK beach last year. The owner was walking her miniature dog along the beach when a dog that was off its lead, ran toward her and attacked her dog.  She tried to fight it off, but it was too big and strong. The owner eventually dragged it away.

Again, same story, she brought her dog to the vet, but the animal was already dead.

In a separate incident, another dog was killed in a park in London, and his owner suffered two fractured fingers when she tried to save him. She was walking her pet in west London when the other dog, which wasn’t on a lead, ran up to them and began to attack the smaller dog. The owner made no attempt to intervene, he just took the dog and ran away and by then her dog was dead.

These stories are very similar and apart from suffering the loss of their pets, the victims have also incurred expenses in having the animals treated by a vet which I assume they had to pay for themselves.

A dog launching an attack on a human or attacking another dog, is at the more serious end of the scale, while dog fouling and nuisance barking are less serious, but they all point to the same thing. We have an issue with the lack of control of dogs in public. Uncontrolled dogs are roaming our streets and housing estates, causing a public nuisance while their owners refuse to control them.

Dogs are not supposed to be out in public unaccompanied. In plain English, they are not allowed to wander outside their property without being kept under control. By law, they are required to be kept under the effective control of their owner. But this doesn’t happen. This law is being flouted in every town, village and housing estate in Ireland.

Dogs can be found wandering in every public space, free to soil gardens and pathways, barking at will, while their owners give two fingers to the rest of the community. Dog fouling has become a national issue, but it’s not being tackled. Many dog owners leave their pets out of the house in the morning and have no idea what their little darlings are doing for the rest of the day. They couldn’t care less either and they’re getting away with it.

We have The Control of Dogs Act 1986. It’s not a complicated piece of legislation and the responsibilities of the owners are set out quite clearly. It says that the owner or any other person in charge of a dog shall not permit the dog to be in any place other than –

• the premises of the owner, or
• the premises of such other person in charge of the dog, or
• the premises of any other person, with the consent of that person,

unless such owner or such other person in charge of the dog accompanies it and keeps it under effectual control. There are penalties for those who refuse to comply with these regulations.

Let’s be honest, while we do have a Control of Dogs Act, we don’t have control of dogs and the evidence can be seen daily. Dog wardens have a role to play here but I don’t see them, and any complaints I have lodged with them have been ignored and they have never returned a single call to me.

I have been banging on about this for some time and I get the same response from the authorities about how difficult it is to enforce this piece of legislation. That’s not good enough. It’s not fair on responsible owners, who thankfully, are in the majority and it’s not fair on the rest of us either.

Local authorities need to step up to the mark here.

A few weeks ago, a journalist was commenting on the radio about the security situation prior to the visit of President Donald Trump to Doonbeg in Co. Clare. She said gardai and security personnel were everywhere and there was effectively a ring of steel around the village. I had heard that description before and it brought back a few memories.

It’s over thirty years since Dublin dentist John O’Grady was kidnapped from his home. It was in October 1987 and the weather was terrible. I remember it well because I spent some time out in it looking for him as he had been held captive in Cork for a bit. It was a big story when it broke after the initial news blackout.

Mr. O’ Grady was a well-known dentist in Dublin, and he had been sitting at home one night, after coming from his surgery, when a gang of armed and masked men forced their way into the house. They beat up some of the family members and kept them prisoner for the night and stole what valuables they could get their hands on.

They were four extremely violent characters and the following morning, they took Mr. O’Grady from the house and put him in the boot of a car and brought him to another house in the centre of Dublin where they were joined by a fifth gang member. The plan was to get a ransom for him, but they had made a serious error because they had kidnapped the wrong man.

Their plan left a lot to be desired and it lacked some basic intelligence. Dr. Austin Darragh was the intended target because he was known to be a very wealthy man. What the raiders didn’t know was that Dr. Darragh had moved from that house in Foxrock in Dublin and left it to his daughter while he went to live a few miles away in Ballsbridge.

The house they had broken into was now owned by his daughter who was married to Dr. John O’Grady. He wasn’t a wealthy man, but the gang decided to go ahead with their plan anyway.

Dessie ‘Border Fox’ O’Hare of the INLA, was responsible for the kidnapping and along with other gang members they held him in the basement of a house in Parkgate Street for a few days before they bundled him into a car and drove him to a cottage near Carrigtwohill in Co. Cork. He was put in a shed first and was later transferred to a 40-foot container.

The gang had been traced to this cottage by the gardaí but when they carried out a raid on the property, they discovered the kidnappers had escaped through a tunnel that led to the main road and from there, they hijacked a car and made their getaway with Mr. O’Grady.

The manhunt switched to another area after a motorist saw four suspicious hard looking men, crossing the main Cork to Mallow road near Rathduff. I was stationed in Blarney at the time and Rathduff was part of our Garda District, so we were sent out there to search deserted houses, sheds and barns etc.

Then it was decided to extend the search into Rathduff woods, and a large number of gardai and army personnel were summoned to meet at Gurranabraher Garda Station early one morning. At 6am, truckloads of soldiers lined up in the street while the army officers and gardai gathered in the garda station, waiting to be briefed on what was about to happen.

There was going to be a search for the kidnappers but beyond that we didn’t have any specific information. The operation was being kept very quiet for fear of a leak that might alert the criminal gang.

Shortly after 6am, a very irate superintendent stormed into the room and he had a face like thunder. He was a very big man and he wasn’t noted for being mild mannered. He marched up to the table at the top of the room and raised a copy of the Cork Examiner over his head and angrily threw it on the table in front of him. The headlines on the front of the paper, in big bold letters announced, ‘Ring of steel around Rathduff Wood’.

It wouldn’t happen to James Bond or the team of Mission Impossible, but our secret mission had been rumbled. It had been released to the public before we even left the garda station and that didn’t go down too well with our boss man.

Maurice Gubbins and Mark Hennessey, reported that the countryside was cordoned off, within a 20-mile radius of Burnfort, Rathduff and Sixmilewater, after there had been a reported sighting of the kidnappers on the Cork to Mallow road. Garda chiefs decided to search the 1,000 acres of woodlands between Rathduff and Glenville where they suspected that the gang could be hiding.

This would mean a full-scale search in rough terrain where the woods provide ideal conditions for a hideout and the hopes of catching the gang could be slim. Fingerprints taken after the Midleton shoot-out matched those of a Corkman recently released from jail and his local knowledge is said to have been vital in the rapid escape of the gang from East Cork after the shoot-out with gardai.

Maurice and Mark were spot on, but it didn’t matter because O’Grady was back in Dublin. He was held captive for 23 days before he was finally freed from a house by gardaí during a bloody shoot-out in Cabra during which one garda officer was shot and seriously wounded.

O’Hare was tracked to Urlingford, Co Kilkenny, where he was shot and injured by an Army sniper. His associate Martin Bryan was killed. The other members of the gang were also captured and jailed.