NOW AVAILABLE AT AMAZON KINDLE: PART ONE - THE BOYS OF DERRY - A CHRONICLE OF GROWING UP IN THE BOGSIDE, NORTHERN IRELAND.
FORMATTED FOR YOUR PAPERWHITE & DX KINDLES and IN COLOUR FOR THE NEW FIRE, FIRE HD, AND FIRE 8.9 KINDLES. 500 pages.
The New Paperback version - BLOODY SUNDAY - is available now directly from the author by request through the contact page in this website.
FORMATTED FOR YOUR PAPERWHITE & DX KINDLES and IN COLOUR FOR THE NEW FIRE, FIRE HD, AND FIRE 8.9 KINDLES. 500 pages.
The New Paperback version - BLOODY SUNDAY - is available now directly from the author by request through the contact page in this website.
** Growing up in Derry, from childhood through adolescence, to adulthood and one of the most remembered days in the history of Ireland. ** January 30, 1972 - Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
Excerpt from Chapter one
"Blessed are they who are satisfied with nothing, for they shall not be disappointed." - Manus In the 1940s Derry was alive in a way that would soon disappear forever. It was alive with people and their daily lives, the social intercourse of people who were gregarious and friendly, kind and compassionate. Street traffic was mostly commercial — buses, coal lorries, bread vans, vegetable trucks and milk delivery vans mixed with horse-drawn carts and drays. Few people owned cars, so they walked to work, to school, to shop, to play and to worship. Women scrubbed the footpaths in front of their low row houses and stood in the doorways or sat outside to talk to neighbours and passersby. Everyone, and everything about them, was known by all. It was a close-knit community, vibrant and happy, not yet ravaged by violence or gradually diminished and isolated by televisions and cars. Many men were unemployed and there was little prospect of work. Sometimes I heard talk of men who "went over to England" to work. Women could find employment in shirt factories and many families depended on that meager income to make ends meet. Young women had this tedious work to look forward to when they finished school at age fourteen. At least it was employment. Young men knew that a dismal life of unemployment awaited them. Some were the sons of men who had never held a job. This produced recklessness in them and the need to seek some measure of self-worth. They disdained danger and were eager to embrace opportunities to display their courage and establish their authority in their neighbourhood and in loose-knit street gangs to which most belonged. This often consisted of challenge fights within the gangs or fights between "named" members of rival gangs. There were unwritten codes that regulated these fights and gang rivalry in general. |