Ballykeel

 We went to live in Ballykeel 2 sometime in the mid-eighties. It was predominantly a Protestant estate with few Catholic families living there. The people in our square were friendly enough. The neighbour on one side was housework mad, her home and children were spotless. She washed her wheelie bin inside and out every single week. She cleared up after every meal and straight away set the table for the next one. Every night at eleven o’clock sharp the hoover came out. Bert and I used to lie in bed and laugh about it. Being newly partnered up we had far better things to be at than vacuuming floors.

Dotty’s vacuum cleaner was not the only thing that disturbed our nights. One night I heard the clink of glass coming from outside and peeked through the window. There were young fellows all over the place, masked with scarves and balaclavas, for those were pre-hoodie days. They were gathering up armfuls of empty milk bottles from all our doorsteps. Soon after the RUC were in the estate and the young fellows were pitching petrol bombs at them. This was what the empty bottles were for. There was a tremendous commotion just outside our house and I had to look out. The other next door neighbour’s son (not Dotty’s) was being pursued by two burly members of the DMSU and I heard them shouting, “Come here ye wee bastard!” He made it to his mother’s house and I don’t know whether they trailed him out of it or not but if they did there was damn all they could do about it for he was only about fifteen at the time. This young boy never spoke to me because he knew I was Catholic. That was the thing about Ballykeel 2 – the older people were friendly enough, the young girls and the children were fine with us but teenage boys rarely spoke to us. They were too hard and too loyal to take to do with one of the other sort. That wee hard boy had a cross to bear himself for his mother had foolishly landed him with a Fenian name. He insisted he was ‘Raymond’ to his friends, but when his name appeared in the papers, which it did with some regularity when he got a bit older, he was ‘Eamon’.

The picture above brought back some memories. It was taken on a hot, hot day in midsummer. The man on the right was a quiet wee widower who gave nobody any bother. That young lad leaning on my bin? I cannot remember who he was at all. Hannah is to the left of the picture sucking her thumb, a great hobby of hers in those days and many a day since. The picture is in rough shape but there is something about it that I like. Most of those houses are gone now, bulldozed to the ground by the NIHE.  In the background, you can see Crebilly Chapel looking down over that big Protestant estate.

We left Ballykeel after an incendiary device was placed on my doorstep. The police were keen to prosecute the person responsible and went out of their way to move us to a safer area. This process took five months during which time I lived among my Ballykeel neighbours and came to no further harm. We moved to Dunclug, which was, at that time, a pleasant estate. Its dark days were yet to come.

Many years later whilst working in the hostel we had a couple of Ballykeel men come in to give the place a lick of paint. They were connected to an organisation with Ulster in its name and were carrying out work for the community.

I asked one of them, “Tell me this. Are there any Catholics living in Ballykeel now?” His reply, a trifle indignant, “Indeed there are! We take very good care of our Catholics in Ballykeel!” I didn’t like to say that no one took much care of my kids when they were getting verbally abused on their way to and from school. Maybe it was their kids who were doing it.

 In case you were wondering…

NIHE – Northern Ireland Housing Executive. Province-wide housing authority established in the early seventies. It was a reaction to the civil disturbances in the country in the sixties many of which related to the unfair distribution of public housing run by the local councils. It soaked up a lot of my peers who graduated from the University of Ulster in the seventies.

RUC – Royal Ulster Constabulary. Has since been rebranded Police Service of Northern Ireland. It was perceived as ‘a Protestant Force for a Protestant People’ but by the time the eighties came around nobody liked them. Hence the rebranding.

DMSU – Divisional Mobile Support Units. These were very scarey policemen brought out to riot situations. They were very well-armed and wore full face visors which made them scarier still. They were often hyped-up to the max and not to be messed with.

Fenian – used by Protestants as a derogatory term for Catholics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian