Irish Summer Camp February 25, 2009

Stepping off the bus into an indecisive Irish drizzle the first thing you are confronted with is a seven foot tall football player with the eyes of a homicidal maniac and the arms of an irate silverback. This man is built like a brick shit-house. He doesn’t have a face, per se, more of a neck with pupils. As you pick up your luggage from the bag compartment, the man gives you a stare that you will remember for the rest of your life. He does the same to each child. Then he starts barking at you in another language.

  This is the Gaeltacht. The football player is the headmaster of the summer school of Loch an Iuir - a small village in county Donegal where the 300 exiled souls that make up its population speak only in Irish. A population you’ll be living with for the next 21 days. They are all, incidentally, batshit-insane.

The settlement itself is the definition of ‘arsehole of nowhere.’ It has one school, one petrol station and, of course, one pub – all within one hundred metres of each other. The petrol station has schizophrenia, and from time to time sells fish and chips. Nobody would have thought it was possible to deep-fry haddock in diesel, but it is. 

For three weeks during the summer, secondary school children from across Ulster find themselves holed up in this village and living with a local family in a house with enough bunk-beds to give a paedophile drill sergeant a rude-on. You are allowed no TV and no computers. iPods and mobiles are strongly discouraged. You go to Irish language class for about 3 hours every day and you’re given a timetable of activities to go to – traditional Irish dancing, traditional Irish music, and traditional Irish finger painting. Adhere to the timetable or you’ll have to explain yourself to Master Neckface – in Irish. Believe me; it is fairly difficult to say “I forgot about it” in a different language while a rhinoceros glares at you. You adhere to the fucking timetable. 

Considering the rules (no sex, no drugs, and no rock and roll) it is no surprise a healthy black market quickly develops among the campers. Most deals involve cigarettes or vodka being exchanged for a ridiculous amount of Euros, but you do get the occasional bit of weed floating around. Generally though, whoever smuggles in the most Lambert and Butler usually earns more money than Joe, the glass-eyed manager of the petrol station. The whole place is a strange, dystopian otherworld– a cross between a rehab clinic for teen junkies and a child soldier training camp for the IRA.

The prevalence of high-jinks during my incarceration was notably high. Students were always being thrown off the summer course for some reason or another. Some campers thought nothing of it when they dodged behind the petrol station for a quick smoke between classes. In hindsight, they probably shouldn’t have lit up so close to the station’s gas tanks, clearly marked “Flammable as fuck.”

Fortunately, in Ireland, nothing explodes unless somebody wants it to. The young fellows were caught and they got away with your standard harsh warning. 

But lads from the dark corners of West Belfast don’t much care for warnings. 

Let me explain: the school occasionally held special events - for the purposes of keeping up morale, you understand. The costume competition was a regular favourite year after year. Amid the usual dealings of the evening – the furtive hustle of fags in jean pockets and the careful pouring of whiskey into a half-finished bottle of Coke - the lads from the Westside decided to don a few balaclavas, some army surplus gear and pick up a bit of replica weaponry. They stepped out of their house and began stopping drivers who were on their way through the village. 

“Excuse me, miss,” said one of the fellas to a pensioner who had politely rolled down her window, “Have you seen any Protestants in the area?”

“What?” replied the woman, “No- I mean- what? What is this? Who are you?”

“We, ma’am,” said the costumed young man, “are the I.R.A.”

The illusion was complete. The old lady took off and the Garda (Police) promptly arrived on the scene.

I said things in Ireland don’t explode unless someone wants them to. Sorry, that was a lie. Because old Neckface exploded that night. Fuck, he went up like Dresden. The boys were quickly chucked out of the school. By the time their Mas and Das came up and drove them back to Belfast, the legend was already taking shape amongst the campers. The fellas had been set up. The ‘Ra had actually been there. The Master had been in a shoot-out with the fellas! The kind of spectacular bullshit any Irishman or woman worth their salt would be proud to spread. By the end of the week someone had posted a billboard on the school’s timetable that read “Free the Loch an Iuir Twelve!” essentially giving them the status of nationally revered political martyrs. 

Following the inevitable clampdown (on everything) it became difficult to procure cigarettes and there was something of a booze drought. This made the bi-weekly game of “get-absolutely-fucking-shatter-blasted-without-the-teachers-noticing” that bit more difficult. Luckily, each house was staffed with a ‘young leader’, usually a university student. I’m sure we all know how corrupt uni students can become. The young leader of the house I stayed in would get our contraband in exchange for humiliating foot massages and embarrassing musical performances. If the wild rumours of sexual favours being demanded from the kids of other houses are to be believed (and they probably shouldn’t be), we got lucky. 

When it came time for our release back to the urban wastes of Northern Ireland we were thoroughly institutionalised. Readjusting to normal boring summer life at home was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever gone through. To this day I still check my back pocket to see if my pack of Golden Virginia is sticking out. 

I don’t even smoke.