Monthly Archives: April 2015

Comboni Missionaries | Becoming a Collaborator

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Catching Escapees

By the beginning of second year, Pinkie seemed to be taking a bit of a shine to me and was giving me more responsibility, which I appreciated. I knew from the previous year that the reason that we were told to leave our outgoing letters unopened was that Fr. Rector would read them first before sealing them and sending them out to our parents, friends, or anyone else.

It seems that when some of the eleven year old boys, who came from all over the country, experience what it is like both to be away from their parents, family and friends for the first time and experience the harsh unchanging regime, that they immediately ‘lose their vocations’ and wanted to go home.

They, of course, told their parents this in their letters of the first few weeks at college. They were sad and lonely. They missed their Mum. They missed their Dad. They missed their favourite brother or sister. The missed their dog. They missed their friends and the places they grew up in. They wanted to come home immediately.

Not Allowed to Leave

However, they couldn’t abandon their vocation just like that. God had called them and this was just a temporary weakness on their part. Once they settled down and got used to the place they would be all right.

So, the parts of the letters where they said they were completely miserable and just wanted to come home were censored by Fr. Rector’s stamp. If it was the theme of the whole letter then the whole letter was simply binned.

All incoming letters were also opened and read. If the content wasn’t approved they were inked out or binned altogether.

Wanted to Go Home

I knew when I was in first year that several of the boys were distraught that all their entreaties to their parents to come and get them were simply ignored. The letters that they received from their parents ignored what they told them of their loneliness and their despair and their wish to come home. Little did they know that their parents knew nothing of this at all.

These eleven year old boys were, in effect, prisoners in the heart of Old England in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Some of them actually tried to escape and were caught and brought back. This was a children’s Colditz in West Yorkshire – and nobody, even a hundred yards away, knew it was happening.

Collaborating With Pinkman

As I said, previously, Pinkie was starting to give me more responsibility by the start of second year and I was very proud of it. He seemed to be taking me into his inner circle. We had only one Dad to share between all of us and I was very happy that it seemed he was starting to favour me.

Anyway, he took me aside and told me he had reason to believe that one of the new first year pupils might try to escape. My job, he said, was to watch him at all times especially during periods when we were outside, for instance at recreation. I wondered how he had got that information. How did he know that the boy would try to escape?

The Police State

However, the state knows everything. The poor boy must have been pleading desperately with his parents to come and take him home. The powers that be there would have been aware of that from his (censored) letters home. They would also know, from past experience, that boys who were in despair because their parents seemed to be ignoring their pleas to come home would eventually try to escape.

The boys never had much chance. Many came from parts of the country perhaps hundreds of miles away. He would have had no money as we had to hand that in at the start of term. It could only be spent at the inhouse Tuck Shop. Even those who lived a mere twenty miles away couldn’t have made it.

They were doomed but they were desperate. No one ever successfully escaped in all the time I was there. It had a better record than Colditz. It had a better record than Alcatraz.

Part of ‘State Aparatus’

I didn’t really expect the boy to try and escape. However, I was now a privileged part of the ‘state apparatus’ and I kept my eyes on him at all times. I couldn’t believe my luck when on the second day after I had been told to watch him, the poor guy looked around and then made a break for it up the driveway from the lower school recreation area.

I immediately darted in and got Pinkie. What kudos I would get for that. I was now an accepted part of the establishment I felt. He would be so pleased that he had picked me. He could see how I had performed.

The priests immediately got their cars and went into operation. They grabbed the guy less than a few hundred yards from the college. I can’t remember the guy’s name. To this day he still wouldn’t have known what happened.

He must have been astonished by the ruthless efficiency of the system. He had waited until there were no priests around before he made his break for freedom. How could he have been caught so quickly?

Repressive Systems

The truth is that in all repressive systems you never know who is the informer. He could never have guessed that I had been recruited into the state structure and that it was I who was spying on him and who had ‘handed him over’.

Even though I was only twelve years old when I was ‘recruited’ I still feel a little guilty that I succumbed so easily. I suppose that it was the desire to fit in, to be a valued member of the system. I suppose it is this that causes people who live under repressive regimes to become informers on their own friends and colleagues.

I learned a valuable lesson there. I have always rejected all attempts by systems elsewhere in my life to suck me in and make me a part of it.

It was a terrible thing I did and I’m thoroughly ashamed of it. How many people who were informers under the ex-Soviet bloc, and the dictatorships in South America must now feel the same.

At least I was only twelve years old when I was recruited.

Comboni Missionaries | Groomed by Father Pinkman

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Father Pinkman and the Cold Showers

I used to wet the bed when I was at the college. I had ust turned 11 years old.

I tried to cover it up in the first few days when I was there but nothing gets covered up there. Within days Fr. Pinkman approached me and said he knew about it and that I should take the sheets down to the nuns whenever I did it.

There were two of us but I’ll spare the other guy by not naming him.

I never ever did see a doctor about it but Pinkie used to feed me advice about what the doctor was advising. I have no idea whether there was ever a doctor involved but I believed him implicitly.

Why wouldn’t I? Why would he lie? He was there to look after us. All the time that I was there I never even questioned for a minute whether he was telling the truth or not.

Different Answers

As I’ve said before in other parts of the book, it is strange re-inputting the data that was previously only put through your 11- and 12-year old mind again and processing the information with an adult brain.

My conclusions are obviously very different now.

His first theory was that I should sleep with extra blankets and to keep adding blankets until it stopped. The warmer I was, presumably, the less likely I was to do it. I remember, at one point, that while the other boys were sleeping with just two blankets, that I was actually sleeping with twelve blankets on me.

Supposedly the ‘doctor’ had said that this was what I should do to cure it. It is possible that he did. However, it seems more like something a layman would advise rather than a doctor.

Cold Showers Best

However, when the warmth didn’t work the ‘doctor’ gave completely the opposite advice.

Indeed Pinkie said that what the doctor was now recommending was that I should have a completely cold shower as soon as I got up at 6:35 in the morning. We were now well into the winter and it was bloody freezing to be frank.

Not only that, I shouldn’t have the shower where the other boys were washing but I had to have it in the basement, in the single shower that was down there. There was never anybody about at that time of the morning down there.

Except, of course, Pinkie.

Pulled Back the Shower Curtains

I remember on the first morning of the cold showers Pinkie suddenly pulling back the shower curtains. Why he needed to watch the ‘treatment’ I don’t know but I never questioned it at the time.

I didn’t even know about sex at all at the time, didn’t know heterosexuality existed never mind homosexuality. I had definitely never heard of the term paedophile.

However, I sensed something was not right as he stood there rubbing his hands over and over again. He seemed just too intense.

He told me I had to use soap as well. Why soap was part of the ‘treatment’ I don’t know – especially as it was only the normal carbolic. What curative values did it have?

Offer of Help

“I’ll do it for you” he said.

Even though I was eleven years old and we were completely captive to those in charge of us and especially to Pinkie, I said “no”.

I had been very, what they used to call ‘modest’ in those days. I really instinctively didn’t like being seen without my clothes on. Even more so, I wouldn’t have liked to be touched without my clothes on.

Just before I came to the college I had had to have a medical where I had to lie on a table and the nurse checked my testicles, presumably to see if my balls had dropped. That was excruciatingly embarrassing and was still fairly fresh on my mind.

I wasn’t having it.

Not Streetwise At All

I think that this actually saved me from Pinkie. I think he took it to mean that I was extremely streetwise compared to my peers when the opposite was actually true.

He actually said that when he gave me the sheet with the facts of life on it when I was in second year. “You probably know all this” he said, “you’re a lot more streetwise than the others”. He said it with a good deal of malevolence and scorn in his voice.

Father Pinkman and the Facts of Life

It seems that the ‘facts of life’ revelations session was one of the major times that he used to compromise the boys. After all he needed to explain some things by showing them what he meant using their bodies as illustration.

I was one of the last ones in my year to get the ‘facts of life’ from Pinkie. By this time he really had it in for me. There’s no anger like a paedophile priest who has been scorned.

He came for the first few shower sessions but then came less frequently. However, I had to continue this morning by morning. He never ever told me to stop. It was just a case of I started to skip it more and more and he never did anything about it.

How I managed to leave the college without being seriously molested by Pinkie, I think was mostly down to luck.

I’ve joked about it since on our reunions. I told the other ‘boys’ that I hadn’t actually been booted out like some of them but had only been suspended for a year. They would ask why I didn’t go back. I would say that after the year was up I considered it and thought to myself “I’ll be buggered if I’ll go back there”.

My Favourite Comboni Missionary – Father Cerea

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Father Cerea

Some of the priests we only rarely saw outside class. Virtually our only contact with them was when they taught us. Some of them lived mainly in the old house, which was where the Bronte sisters used to go to school and later taught.

It looked very nice and comfortable there but we generally only got in there to clean it. The library and TV room (which we didn’t get to see much) was just inside the old house as was the infirmary and Fr. Valmaggio’s surgery.

Fr. Cerea live in that part.

He taught History and Latin.

We didn’t do Latin until second year so it was only History he taught us in first year. I didn’t hit it off with him at all at first. Whenever he asked me questions I wasn’t able to answer. It was more nerves than not knowing the answer, although it was sometimes both. There were three of us, Kevin Benn was another, who were considered the dunces in the History class.

Luckily Fr Cerea had read the report from my school which was good and he frequently said that he couldn’t understand the difference in performance in his class and what he had expected from me – otherwise I might just rotted there as I had completely lost confidence.

Sent to the Front

One day, after I couldn’t answer another question he suddenly said “come up here” and he put me into a desk right at the front of the class. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. There was a sea change in my performance in History. Suddenly from being one of the dunces I was up at the top of the class.

I remembered virtually everything he said from then on and got on with Fr Cerea very well. Indeed I was sometimes accused by one boy of being his pet. He was almost like a father to me (with a small ‘f). History became my favourite subject and Fr. Cerea my favourite teacher. It pleased him a lot that I remembered everything that he said next time round.

One boy, in particular, never used to like it. He was always top of the class overall at the end of the year and was a good hard studier and it annoyed him more than a little that I avoided studying at all costs.

Extra Point

I remember one time Fr Cerea was so pleased at an answer I gave him that he said he was going to add on a full extra mark at the next test we did. I didn’t really understand about the mark. Was it an extra mark at the next class test we would get or the end of the year exams. I wasn’t sure, didn’t enquire and didn’t really care as it wasn’t a big deal to me.

However, it was a big deal to this boy. He mentioned it a few times to me saying that it wasn’t right or fair for me to be given an extra mark in a test for something I got right in the class.

He even came up to me when we were on our walk to enquire about it and whether I thought it was fair or not. I don’t think anybody else in the class cared except this boy, and I certainly didn’t care if I got an extra mark or not. What was most important to me was that Fr Cerea was delighted by what I had done and that was far more important to me than a mark in an exam.

Favourite Son

As I said, he felt almost like a father to me and I looked forward to his classes and, to be honest, he treated me like a favourite son and always smiled with great pride when I got a hard question right.

It was a very important relationship to me. I’m sure some people reading this will be thinking “I wonder if there’s something funny about all of this” but there wasn’t on either side. It was just a favourite teacher / favourite pupil relationship.

When you are living away from home at the age of eleven you need something like this. Looking back, I was very lucky. Even away from home I inherited a father. There were loads of other sad, lonely boys who never did. There weren’t enough priests to go around and many of them weren’t interested in this kind of relationship anyway.

This made it easier for Fr Pinkman, whose job in charge of the junior boys gave him close contact with the youngest of the boys in the school between the ages of 11 and 13.

Lured Into Pinkie’s Net

Perhaps if I hadn’t had that father / son relationship with Fr Cerea I might more easily have been lured into Pinkie’s net that many of the other small boys were lured into. I did want to get on with Pinkie as he was our appointed father who had to be shared by about 55 boys in the junior school. The fact that the other priests didn’t see much of us outside class made it very easy for him.

I got on pretty well with Pinkie in first year – but perhaps I wasn’t quite ready yet. The technical definition of a paedophile is someone who has sex with someone below the age of puberty. That wasn’t Pinkie as far as I know. It was under-age boys who had just reached puberty that he had an appetite for – and this fox was in sole control of the whole hen coop at St. Peter Claver College.

The boys he did lure in, many of them were very badly hurt by it even into later years of their lives. Some were never fixed.

However, there were others still who Pinkie didn’t lure but who weren’t able to have a father / son relationship with any of the priests there. The senior boys and junior boys were kept apart and led mostly separate lives, unable to talk to each other except at certain times. Some of the junior boys of eleven and twelve must have been lonely. After a while the other boys there became their brothers and so that relationship must have helped them through.

My emotions about the place are mixed but mostly positive. There were a lot of good things about it.

Comboni Missionaries Seminary | The Daily Grind

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Comboni Missionaries – The Daily Grind

One thing that struck me at the reunions was how well many of the Boys had done. Many of them had become successful entrepreneurs or had become successful within their chosen professions. When you think of it, it isn’t really surprising.

Here is a bunch of people, who, at the age of eleven volunteered to leave behind their families and friends and to move to a part of the country that many of them didn’t know, to live with a bunch of strangers with the end result of joining the priesthood and going out to the missions in Africa.

That’s got to take a bit of balls. I’ve got a 16-year-old daughter and by her age I’d already done all of his and been kicked out and was back in the system again.

I’ve also got a 11-year-old son who is a few months older than when I volunteered for this lifestyle and I couldn’t dream of sending him off to another country away from family and friends to live amongst strangers, to live amongst them for many years, only coming back to visit during the holidays and then going off to a life in the missions of Africa. I couldn’t even think of volunteering him for that or even approving it of he suggested it himself.

So, it’s not surprising that many of those who did volunteer for just such a thing at the age of eleven became entrepreneurs or pursued successful careers.

If people were looking for potential risk takers of the future that would have been a good place to go hunting.

Mick Wainhouse

One guy, who became an extreme risk taker but in a different way, was Mick Wainhouse.

Mick was actually a bit of a quiet guy in school and a bit of a gentle giant but he went on to join the Paras in Northern Ireland, got kicked out for robbing a Post Office whilst pretending to be the IRA, serving five years in jail.

He went on to become a mercenary in Angola serving as Captain with the notorious mercenary Colonel Callan, dispensing rural justice and shooting to death at least one inexperienced mercenary and then fleeing Angola whilst Colonel Callan and others were being captured and sentenced to death.

Verona Fathers Regimented Life

Mick would have fitted very well into the very regimented life of 1st Para after the grounding he had at the Verona Fathers. Every weekday was the same. It went:-

6:35 – Bell goes and everybody gets up and washes. Bedclothes pulled down
7:00 – Mass
7:45 – Bedclothes pulled up, get changed into shorts, T shirts and plimsolls and run around the building down to the seniors playground followed by PE in the cold morning air
8:15 – Breakfast
9:00 – School starts
13:-00 – School finishes
13:00 – Lunch
13:40 – Work
14:15 – Recreation
15:00 – Study
16:00 – Meditation
16:20 – Tea
17:00 – School starts again
19:00 – School finishes
19:00 – Supper
19:40 – Recreation
21:00 – Evening Service
21:40 – Wash and get ready for bed
22:00 – Lights Out

It was a little different at the weekend when he would have been allowed a lie in till 7am.

Mealtimes at the Comboni Missionaries Seminary

The spartan food would also have been an ideal preparation. Mick was tall for his age and even the smaller boys went a bit hungry.

There was a priest in charge of the junior boys, a Father Pinkman, who was later to be moved from his duties after some of older boys led a deputation to the Spiritual Advisor to prevent him doing to the new junior boys what he had done to some of them when in the juniors.

Let’s leave it at that for the moment!

Fascist Sympathies

The rules were very strict. The order was Italian and many of the priests at Mirfield were Italian including the Father Rector. Some of them expressed Fascist sympathies. After all, this was only 18 years after the end of the Second World War.

They liked rules. Indeed, they liked strict rules.

It was only really during Recreation, Work and Mealtimes that you could talk to one another.

Books at Mealtimes

Even during Supper they would get a guy to read from a book for a while before the two priests, the one in charge of the Junior Boys and the one in charge of the Senior Boys, rang a bell to say you could talk.

Even when the book reading finished they sometimes delayed ringing the bell and even made motions as if to ring it before pulling back. It was all about power and control.

The books were always boring and they would be about things like Good Manners and Etiquette. We were dying to talk. When the book reading had ended everyone had their eyes on the two priests to see when they would ring the bell and they could then start chatting with their pals.

Great swathes of the day were spent with The Boys unable to talk. It was a great release when they could. As you can imagine a lot of whispering was done.

No Talking or Whistling

You couldn’t talk in the corridor. Whistling was completely banned.

The senior Boys and the junior Boys were not allowed to talk to each other even though they often encountered each other. They would be in the Refectory at the same time but with the juniors on one side of it and the seniors on the other.

They would also be in church at the same time – but with the seniors on one side of the church and the juniors on the other.

They had separate recreation Rooms and had separate dormitories.

Seminary was Good Training for Paras

When young guys join the Paras, many of those who do may have come from home comforts to a strictly regimented regime – but for Mick it was very much a home from home.

Mick used to team up with a guy called Mick Palmer who was in the same year as he was. When he moved up to second year the two of them teamed up with a guy called John ‘Titch’ Carey who was from Doncaster.

The three of them were inseparable. As you can guess ‘Titch’ was one of the smaller Boys. It was strange to see them walking around together. Mick was slightly above medium height but it was like seeing a Little, Medium and Large walking around.

Gentle Giant

Mick Wainhouse was very much a gentle giant, though. He seldom got into any trouble or scrapes. He was a nice guy and I don’t think anyone disliked him at all.

It still seems very strange that he later joined the Parachute Regiment, went to Northern Ireland and his regiment were involved in the Bloody Sunday massacre of unarmed Catholics on a peaceful protest march.

An embargo has been put on the names of the Paras who were actually engaged on Bloody Sunday so we won’t know whether Mick was there on that fateful day or not, but as he was in the regiment and there at the time of Bloody Sunday, it is almost certain that he was.

It is even more strange to think of him as one of the big four Angolan Mercenaries. Indeed Colonel Callan, Costas Georgiou, even made him his captain.

It seemed totally unlike the Mick Wainhouse that we knew and liked.

The Comboni Missionaries Paedophilia Apology Will Come

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Comboni Missionaries Apology

It will come,

it will come.

It may not be by the current leaders of the Comboni Missionaries Order, whose hands are steeped in cover-up, but by a new generation of Comboni Missionaries who are not tainted by the paedophila and the cover-ups of the past.

David Cameron apologised for Bloody Sunday. Previous generations of Conservatives would not have, as they were involved in the cover-up. It will be the same here when a new generation takes over.

The current generation will not be well-remembered within the Order. They will be seen as part of an ugly past and a blight on the good name of the Order. The current leadership will be consigned to the dustbin of history by the members of their own Order.

Future Generations

They will be an embarassment to future generations of Comboni Missionaries who will condemn them and their activities and who will seek to turn the corner after a shameful past.

What sort of people would not react angrily when confronted by the fact that young boys as youg as 11, in the care of the Comboni Missionaries, were serially abused by a multiple of priests in the Order over a couple of decades.

I would like to see them meet the parents (those still alive) who sent away their young sons into their care so that they would become priests.

I’d like to hear them tell the parents why they covered up the abuse on their young sons and gave them no help afterwards. I’d like to hear them tell the parents why some of their sons were sent away, with their vocations destroyed, in order to cover up rampant paedophilia in the Order.

Apology Will Come

However, future generations of Comboni Missionaries will apologise for them, i.e. for the paedophiles and for those who covered it up.

No matter what else they have achieved in their careers at the Verona Fathers, no matter how high they have risen, after they have gone, their lives will be remembered for their cover up of the paedophile priests.

Indeed – no one will want to remember them at all.

Why would that not make them angry? it makes everyone else angry.

The apology will come!

The apology will come!

A Very Arrogant Man – by Mark Murray

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A man who thinks he has God on his side.

 

A met a very arrogant man this week

He told me: “In  a life of seventy five years –  I was the first person that had ever called him arrogant.”

He refused to look.

He refused when I asked him to look.

He could not look at me.

He was too arrogant to look at me.

…or maybe he was too frightened to look at me

 

There’s a thin line between Confidence and Arrogance… Its called Humility. Confidence smiles. Arrogance smirks. – Unknown

Arrival at Mirfield | Comboni Missionaries

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Arrival at Mirfield

In those days the train journeys were very long. My memory was that the train journey from Glasgow to Leeds lasted for 7 hours.

It was the start of a great adventure. I remember it was a very sunny and hot day (aren’t all your favourite days that way?).

Some of the parents came down to drop us off. We were in one compartment of the train and they were in the one next door.

Even Better

I remember arriving at the bus stop called ‘Robin’ presumably called after Robin Hood who was supposed to have had some connection with the area.

The place was even better than Fr. Tavano had described. It was in quite a few acres of ground. There was a woods – or a Copse as they called it. There was three different football pitches. There was a Grotto to our Lady on the lawn with Primula all around.

There was Fr. Cerea’s garden where he grew all sorts of flowers and vegetables.

There was a Recreation room where you could play Table Tennis, Snooker, Billiards, Chess or Draughts.

And to cap it all it was where the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne went to school.

Holiday Camp

This really was different from Greenock. This really was like a holiday camp. It was going to be fantastic. We were now living in a really great place and we were going to become priests and go to Africa to teach the natives about God at the end of it.

Little did we realise that the holiday camp would turn out more like a prison camp.

After our parents had departed on the first day I asked one of the 2nd year boys if we could have a look around outside and perhaps go down to the local town.

We couldn’t.

We were not allowed to leave the grounds. There was a wall about four feet high surrounding The College.

It might as well have been 40 feet.

Comboni Missionaries Vocations – The Cash Benefits

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Cash Benefits

A new unexpected bonus from having a vocation was that people would give you money – and lots of it. Before I set off to be a priest I was told by my mother to go around the houses of relatives and friends of the family.

This was an absolute goldmine. Generally they would give you a ten-shilling note. This was the equivalent to only 50p in today’s currency but it was worth a lot more then. It would buy 20 chocolate bars.

To give you some kind of perspective my weekly pocket money was 10d, whereas a ten shilling note was worth 120d. So I was getting 12 weeks pocket money at every house I would visit.

And it wasn’t a one-off!

Every time I came home from the college I would go and visit my aunts and uncles and family friends and I would receive more money.

I would usually get between 6 and 8 of these so I was getting around a year and a half’s pocket money from just one trip around the town.

My Brother’s Vocation

Years later my brother ‘got a vocation’ and went off to the same place. My parents always suspected that it was the financial benefits that attracted him but he always denied it vociferously enough that they gave him the benefit of the doubt. After all, this was a second chance to have a son become a priest.

I didn’t always get it at the end of the summer either just before I went back. I got some of them at the beginning and this made for very pleasant summers with a whole heap of money in my pocket.

Why they all gave me money I don’t know. A ten-shilling note was a lot of money then and was quite a significant part of their weekly pay packet after tax. In fact my guess would be it would be close to 10% of their weekly take home pay.

I have wondered if I was getting their ‘contribution to God’ and that I would remember them when I became a priest.

Generosity of Heart

I think it was mainly down to their generosity though and their feeling of duty to help a member of what was quite a close family in the early days when there was an opportunity for one of their number to make something of himself at an early age.

One sometimes felt a little guilty at some of the things I spent this money on. Would they have felt that part of their money should go on things like a Lemon Meringue Pie?

I also bought a Brownie camera at some expense and took lots of pictures which were quite expensive to get developed in those days.

I probably had more spare and ready-to-spend cash in those days as an 11-13 year old boy than I would have till I got well into my twenties.

Joining the Chosen Ones

Those were great days – and I had joined the Chosen Ones as well.

Life could not have been sweeter.

The future could not have been brighter here on earth – and then there was a good spot available to be had in the hereafter as well.

This was the mid sixties and it was a pretty hopeful time anyway.

And I was right near the front of the queue.

Verona Fathers Reunion Announced

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Comboni Missionaries Reunion

We received this from im Kirby, ex-seminarian at Mirfield and who works in the travel industry.

“I have just recently returned from Florida and was chatting with Liam Gribben. He will be in Ireland at his usual work conference from Wednesday the 20th May staying in Malahide which is close to Dublin Airport on the coast. He is staying at the Grand Hotel but would love to see if we can get a group together to go over and see him weekend of the 22nd May.

“The weekend is fixed so if you can come I hope you will and if so let me know as soon as possible and I will make arrangements for accommodation at good rates. You can all get easy flights into Dublin . We will make arrangements for people to be met at the airport, so don’t worry about transfers.

“I need to get a rate on hotels. The area in Malahide is beautiful and if we aim to arrive Friday we propose staying until Sunday. Hope as many of you as possible can come and please pass this on to others not listed above as these are the only e-mail addresses I have.

“Martin (Murphy), bring your guitar and I’ll do song books. Danny (Curren) bring the banjo!

“So guys you can either make it or not make it, the date is fixed and the venue. Don’t let yet another year go by again without a reunion and do ask others.

“Let me know as soon as possible if you can make it and so far Liam,Frank Barnes and myself are confirmed”.

Bank Holiday Weekend

It seems that it is a UK bank holiday weekend. Jim is sorting out the hotel and seeing who will give us the best rates.

A further email from Jim states:-

“Ask people to book the Friday and return either the Sun or Mon. Eamon told me tonight that flights from Glasgow are really cheap. Anyway Eamon is doing a wider e-mail tomorrow and hopefully we’ll get a few more to tag on. I will sort out the accommodation, you can let them know and I’ll keep price as best as possible.”

If you want to know more details contact Jim Kirby at jaskirby@hotmail.com