Well now, for the day that’s in it.
If you still have your mother then hug her tight.
My own left us in 2017.
She did so after a characteristically dogged battle with ill-health that would have dispatched lesser beings much sooner.
Today I prefer to remember her as my father saw her at the altar.
Thankfully Miss Bridget Murphy had the good sense to marry a fine man from Mayo.
My role today is to be a proxy for my trio of far-flung Donegalies.
The bláthanna have been handed over and I’m at herself’s beck and call on their behalf.
Proper order.
Dear reader, it is also World Theatre Day.
Like being a mother seeing your work performed on stage is probably something that must be experienced to be fully understood.
Rebellion was my love letter to my kin who were out in 1916.
It allowed me to write scenes that I imagined inside Frongoch POW camp in Wales.
My father’s uncle Michael is in there somewhere.
They were part of a generation that pulled out an important piece of Irish timber from the British Empire’s Jenga tower.
Of course, other colonised peoples would follow.
Today that once global imperium is no more, as William Windsor of the Saxe-Coburg Gotha crime family has just discovered in Jamaica.
The route to a republic for the Caribbean nation now seems very clear.
For the avoidance of doubt, viewers in Scotland have their own programme.
As a dramatist, I have been blessed to work with fabulous people who have made my words flesh for a live audience.
Rebellion is the second part of a Glasgow Irish trilogy that is yet to be completed.
This was the first part, written in the weeks after IndyRef in 2014.
Both plays deal with aspects of the illicit ethnicity of how the Glasgow Irish have held onto a sense of themselves in a hostile environment.
As I have often repeated here:
History forgotten is a betrayal.
History remembered is a weapon.
Being part of a theatre audience allows you to silently receive messages about your own journey.
In the back of my Moleskine notebook,where I scribble ideas for creative projects, a line from Quintus Horatius Flaccus reminds me what my role is as a playwright:
Mutato nomine et de te fabula narrator.
A dear aunt of mine attended a performance of Hame.
She was not backwards in letting those around her at the interval know that the extremely cantankerous aul fella requiring domiciliary care in the first act was her sister Bridget!
Obviously, I couldn’t possibly comment.
My mother was the most determined person I have ever known and I miss her every day.
The featured image smiles down on me in the study.
When I’m grappling with a script I sometimes find myself looking up at herself and realise that giving up isn’t an option for Bridget’s son.
Now, if you can, give your mammy another hug.
She deserves it.
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“China has invested over $8 billion in mainly six Caribbean countries between 2005 and 2020 focused on the tourism, transportation, extractive metals, agriculture, and energy sectors.” Foreign Affairs Committee report.
Jamaica: $2.68 billion
Trinidad and Tobago: $1.94 billion
Antigua and Barbuda: $1 billion
Bahamas: $350 million
Cuba: $600 million
Guyana: $2.49 billion
“…extractive metals…” . Let that sink in.
Sino financial colonialism.
As the saying goes, “He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.”
nicely peice you put there phil happy mothers day to all mothers out there and ones who have sadly passed on we shall never forget them in any way i know you said your father uncle micheal in that photo somwhere they must had done a hell of a job in those days must off been real hard also.