Faber and Faber, 2019, 358 p.

How do you follow up a novelistic debut such as This is Memorial Device, a book about an imaginary rock band told from a kaleidoscope of multiple viewpoints? Keenan’s answer is to write about something totally divorced from that. 1970s Northern Ireland. “The best decade what ever lived.” (Except for the lack of oral sex.)

For the Good Times is another odd concoction, though. Larded with “Irish” jokes, it is essentially the story of three laddies, Tommy, Barney and narrator Samuel, held together by a linked love for the songs of Perry Como whom they have been told is absolutely clean-living, and who slip into nationalist activism almost by accident.

Their first project is to carry out a shooting and they narrowly avoid capture, running a roadblock with Tommy on the car roof spraying gunfire while singing For the Good Times. Their second is to recover an old arms stash, their third to kidnap the wife of a comic book store owner who they are told owes The Boys money. Her name is Kathy and she disappears leaving only her high heels behind. Sammy later sees her dancing in a bar, pursues her to the toilets where, unbidden, she fellates him. He can’t decide whether or not the relationship they then enter is because she wants to protect her husband from retribution but goes along with it, meeting her after her work in the Europa Hotel. The three lads take over the book shop in lieu of the supposed debt. Cue various riffs on comic books and superpowers.

This is Belfast as a surreal place. One of the characters is nicknamed Miracle Baby. He is “a retard” but one who knows the truth of everything. Kathy’s husband turns out to look exactly like Tommy. The three each imagine themselves as a different superhero. The most potent power? Invisibility; “being invisible is the greatest power you could ever have in Ireland,” a cloak which IRA membership conforms on them.

There is some stark realism. Local IRA boss Big Mack when the lads are joking about a bomb he’s demonstrating, tells them not to act like clowns, adding, “‘see if the IRA could dispense with Irishmen altogether, we’d be one fuck of a formidable fighting unit.’” Joining The Boys was motivated by “protection, resentment, ambition, revenge, honour, sex, money, style, class,” plus a history of violence “that ran through our veins and (let’s face it) was one of the only things holding the generations together,” and moments of recognition. “In Ireland history isn’t written. It’s remembered.” As it is in all sad countries.

Eventually escape becomes necessary. “Fucking Glasgow, my friend, it’s just like Belfast, the same rivalries, the same segregated pubs, the same flags, the same halls, the same murals, the same fucking teams; a friendly city once you get to know it. Plus you’re just as likely to get stabbed for your colours as back home, so as you know where you stand as soon as you’re off the boat. …. It was just like being back in the Ardoyne only with blow jobs aplenty.” But even life in Glasgow becomes too hot.

However nothing in this world is as it seems. Even Kathy. “It’s a web of lies we were all caught in. It’s the default position of the Irish. If in doubt, lie; if asked, make it up; if questioned deny it … tell them fucking nothing.”

In a passage that might be true to the book’s milieu but could equally well be there because Keenan thinks he ought to say it, Sammy tells us, “that was the one thing we never did: we never asked ourselves any questions, in fact we lied. We lied to ourselves more than we did to anyone else. You had to. How else do you do this stuff, day in day out? If you had a working brain you would be finished.” He says he “realised that Belfast is full of ghosts, that Belfast is haunted in the daytime and that nobody pays attention to any of them.” It’s the perfect place to indulge in mayhem. “If you were a daemon where would you go to do your work? Belfast.”

The novel partly comes across as a kind of cross between Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay and, in its observation of casual violence, Graeme Armstrong’s The Young Team. It is, though, made problematic by its illustrations of violence (admittedly difficult to avoid in any novel dealing with this subject) and flawed by some overblown passages rendered in italics illustrating the adventures of the superheroes the three have imagined for themselves. It also contains an aside on the erotic connotations of the ladies’ silk handkerchief.

Pedant’s corner:- The epigraph attributes the song It’s Impossible to Perry Como. (He did sing it but the English lyric was written, as noted in the Acknowledgements, by Sid Wayne, Spanish words and music by Armando Manzanero.) Otherwise; “a beautiful delicate labia” (labia is the plural, no ‘a’ then,) “a flappy disk” (floppy disc, but this may have been trying to convey the speaker’s argot.) “‘Does that not gives you a shiver?’” (give,) “a dice” (x 3, dice is plural; one of them is a die,) fit (fitted,) “lay low” (several times; lie low,) “so as” (frequently; used where ‘so’ would be sufficient,) “faraway lochs” (I know Keenan is Scots but the narrator is Irish, shouldn’t that be ‘faraway loughs’.)

I’ve been away for a holiday – on Orkney again – but the travelling had me knackered and I haven’t felt like blogging since I got back, though the posts I’d scheduled for the time I would be away seem to have listed okay.

In the interim Paula Rego, the Portugusee artist whom I mentioned here and who lived in England for a long time, has died.

Maria Paula Figueiroa Rego: 26/1/1935 – 8/6/2022. So it goes.

Also gone is Northern Ireland’s most successful football manager, Billy Bingham who took his country to the World Cup Finals not just once, but twice, in 1982 and 1986 and two British Home Championship wins in 1980 and 1984, the last edition of that tournament so that they still hold the title of British Champions. (Northern Ireland had only ever won the tournament outright once before.)

William Laurence (Billy) Bingham: 5/81931 – 9/6/2022. So it goes.

Not to mention longtime campaigner for nuclear disarmament, Bruce Kent.

Bruce Kent: 22/6/1929 – 8/6/2022. So it goes.

Between Sunderland War Memorial and Mowbray Park a memorial wall has been erected to commemorate those who have served in conflicts since the Second World War and to honour Sunderland’s post-World War 2 fallen.

The first section commemorates non-combat deaths in war:-

The rest of the wall is a sobering reminder of the many conflicts in which British soldiers have lost their lives since 1945.

Palestine and India:-

Malaya and the Cold War:-

Korea and the Canal Zone:-

Kenya and Cyprus:-

Aden, Radfan and Suez:-

Borneo, Northern Ireland and Oman Dhofar:-

Falkland Islands and Gulf War:-

Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone:-

Afghanistan and Iraq, plus Ode of Remembrance:-

Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (in two World Wars,) Gulf War 1990-1991, Falkland Islands 1982, Bell of HMS Glasgow 1938:-

Scots Guards Memorial. The plaque commemorates those who died in Northern Ireland or due to terrorist activity. The upper plaque states a nearby window was dedicated in 1950 by the Duke of Gloucester to Scots Guards who died on active service in earlier conflicts:-

After all those visits to Brechin to see the mighty Sons of the Rock play away against Brechin City last year in August in preparation for yet another visit I finally looked up where Brechin’s War Memorial is located. It turned out it’s very near the football ground in a pleasant park area.

It’s an impressive sandstone column:-

Side view:-

World War 2 Dedication. “To the glory of God and in grateful remembrance of those who gave their lives in the Second World War 1939 – 1945.” Below the names, “Greater love hath no man than this.”

Great War Dedication, “To the undying memory of the men of the City and Parish of Brechin who gave their lives in the Great War 1914 – 1919. Their name liveth for evermore,” and names Ada – Cla:-

Great War names Cob – Hod:-

Great War names Hoo-Pai:-

Great War names Pet – You:-

Other Conflicts; Kenya, Northern Ireland, Korea, Malaya. Plus additional names for France 1916, Burma 1945, and Mediterranean 1942:-

This memorial stands above Princes Street Gardens, to the south side of Princes Street, Edinburgh, and was originally erected to commemorate the men of the Royal Scots Greys who died in the Boer War, 1899-1902.

Dedication plaques facing Princes Street. The top one is the commemmoration of the dead of the Boer War (the Second Boer War, aka the South African War.) The lower plaque is to the Scots Greys fallen of the Second World War.

There are further dedication plaques on the western and eastern faces of the monument. The upper plaque here names privates of the Royal Scots Greys who died in the Great War. The lower states, “This memorial was erected in 1906 in memory of the Royal Scots Greys who gave thier lives in South Africa during the Boer War 1899 -1902. Tablets were added after the First World War 1914 to 1918 and after the Second World War 1939 to 1945. In 1971 the Royal Scots Greys amalgamated with the 3rd Carabiniers to form the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers and Greys.)”

Here the upper plaque names officers, NCOs and men who died in the Great War. The lower plaque commemorates the dead of conficts since 1945; in Korea, Northern Ireland and Iraq.

So. This is May’s day.

… — … … — … … — …
Dot, dot, dot; dash, dash, dash; dot, dot, dot. Dot, dot, dot; dash, dash, dash; dot, dot, dot. Dot, dot, dot; dash, dash, dash; dot, dot, dot.
Mayday! Mayday!

We in the UK have recently been sailing troubled waters but now we are coming out of a lea shore and are about to enter the full blast of the storm. Who knows what the political landscape of these islands will look like in three years’ time? A second Scottish Independence referendum has been made ever more probable by the UK goverment’s stance on a so-called hard Brexit and deaf ear to other voices.

Scottish independence might have been achieved on a relatively friendly basis in 2014 but I doubt that’s at all likely now.

The febrile English nationalists (for that is what they are) who have driven this headlong rush over a cliff have no thought of (or care for) Scotland – and still less for Northern Ireland for which this represents a double crisis, the “cash for ash” scandal having led to a breakdown of the power sharing arrangements. They will exact a heavy price for what they will no doubt see as a betrayal of “England, their England”.

I believe Theresa May is trying to look stern when she lectures all and sundry in the House of Commons and on television but to me she looks threatening – as in, don’t dare cross me, my revenge will be sweet – despite there being no substance behind her bluster. Scotland can look for no favours from her.

I never thought that another politician could achieve a position lower in my esteem than Margaret Thatcher did but Theresa May has managed it. (David Cameron, aka Mr Irresponsible, though he is entirely responsible for the mess the UK now finds itself in and amply demonstrated his irresponsibility by doing so and more so by running away from the consequences, is merely a buffoon by comparison.) May is potentially dangerous. Not so much in herself as in what may come after her.

Corgi, 2006, 236 p. One of the Scotsman’s 20 Scottish Books Everyone Should Read.

One night Graham (surname never specified) is taking a short cut – against which his parents have repeatedly warned him – on his way home from football training when he witnesses a gang chasing and stabbing a young lad whom they call “asylum scum”. Graham comforts the wounded boy, Kyoul, uses the mobile phone Kyoul has dropped to call an ambulance and accompanies him to the hospital then slips away but not before Kyoul asks him to take a message, and the phone, to his girlfriend Leanne. This leads to Graham almost by accident involving another boy from training, Joe Flaherty (who is of course from across the sectarian divide to which the book’s title mainly refers) in finding Leanne’s house. She is grateful but has kept her relationship with Kyoul from her own parents and so asks them to visit Kyoul for her. This strand of the book where they find common purpose off the training pitch is intertwined with the background of both footballers.

Graham’s Granda Reid is a proud Orangeman who wants Graham to march in the big Orange Walk which is coming up. Graham’s parents have always resisted pressure to make him take part when he was younger saying he should make his own mind up when he is old enough. However, this is the year he must do so. Joe’s family members are equally committed to upholding their Catholic traditions.

But this is where Divided City is too diagrammatic. Nearly every domestic conversation in the book centres on sectarianism and how the “others” mistreat “our” side.

There were other infelicities. The football training is for a youth team to be known as Glasgow City which is about to take part in an inter-cities youth competition. Here credulity becomes strained. If both boys were as good at football as the novel tells us they’d most likely already be attached to a club and probably not allowed to play for anyone else. Another unconvincing aspect is that Leanne is said to be “not yet sixteen” but she met Kyoul who had wandered in off the street at one of Glasgow University’s school open days and both ended up looking at a stand where they were each wondering what courses they would choose and struck up a conversation. Fifteen is rather young for such a trip. Also, the first time the home ground of Rangers is mentioned it’s by a supporter, who calls it “Ibrox Park.” A fan would just say “Ibrox”. Similarly we get “the Celtic Parkhead stadium”. Then there is the description of an Old Firm game where the phrase “unleashed a stinging right kick” is used. It’s called a shot, not a kick. Later one fan is enjoined to ‘Watch the play’. It would be ‘Watch the game’.

Granted the dilemma of an asylum seeker from a ‘White List’ country, deemed to be safe but which isn’t, may need elucidating to a wider audience, yet while the novel is even-handed enough as between Protestant and Catholic viewpoints I struggled to see for what audience this could have been written, whom it was intended to educate. The book’s cover is emblazoned with the phrase “Carnegie Medal winning author” implying it’s for young adults. But young adults in Glasgow will know about sectarianism, those elsewhere likely not care (Northern Ireland excepted.) The incidental illustration of the usual parental restrictions on adolescent comings and goings do not expand the scope. Divided City’s earlier chapters reminded me of a certain kind of not very good Science Fiction which doesn’t trust its reader to make the connections, so too much is spelled out. And there is an overuse of exclamation marks. I would submit that YA readers deserve better.

There is a good novel about sectarianism – and/or football – in Glasgow out there. This isn’t it.

Pedant’s corner:- “the dark openings of the tenement building mawed at him” (the openings stomached at him?) the local senior boy’s club” (boys’ club, I think,) refers to winning the League Championship (it’s just “winning the League” not League Championship,) Rangers’ (Rangers’s,) ‘How are we going to do that without getting caught.’ (Needs a question mark, not a full stop.)

Under normal circumstances I would be welcoming the intention of David Cameron (known to this blog as Mr Irresponsible) to resign as Prime Minister of the UK as in my opinion he has been the worst incumbent of that office in its entire history (and there has been severe competition for that title.)

However; these are not normal circumstances. The prospect of either of the leading lights of the Vote Leave campaign, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, succceeding him as PM is beyond nightmare. The direction in which the UK would travel under their auspices is not one I would find at all congenial. That Scotland may be given the chance of another vote on independence from the UK as a result of the EU referendum does not alter that conviction. I would not wish what would then be our nearest neighbour to be under their leadership. It is to be hoped the Conservative Party turns away from them and chooses someone else but quite who is actually up to the job is not evident.

I was going to call David Cameron’s decision to cave in to the bullies’ demands for a referendum a catastrophic misjudgement, but I don’t think he made a judgement at all. Everything in his political life so far has gone his way and he thought that situation would continue. But he is a weak man and has reaped his reward. The verdict of history will be harsh.

And what will happen to that southern neighbour when the promised £350 million a week for the NHS doesn’t appear, when immigration stubbornly refuses to fall, when visas are required to travel to the EU, when jobs fail to be created and employment conditions worsen further, when the anger and resentment which Vote Leave has stoked but whose underlying causes they will neither address nor ameliorate, bursts out? Against whom will that anger be directed and in what form? Anyone who looks different? Who sounds different?

What happens to the fragile peace process in Northern Ireland?

How encouraging will this be to right wingers across Europe? What if the Front National wins power in France and starts to discriminate against Muslims – which they surely will, or worse – enraging those with a grudge against “Europe” even more. You can be sure the likes of ISIS/Da’esh will not make a distinction between French Crusaders and British ones.

The immediate future is going to be immensely troubling. This has no simple outcome. The EU cannot afford to be easy-going on the negotiations which have to take place for a UK withdrawal. If they were it would only provide encouragement to any other country which might think of leaving. In any case what incentive would it have to be lenient to a country which has just slapped it in the face. Divorce proceeding are notorious for their acrimony.

As for the main advocate of the UK leaving the EU these past twenty odd years, Nigel Farage. There is now no reason for his party to exist or for him to appear on television ever again – a consummation devoutly to be wished. There is only one phrase fit for him. Il faut cultiver son jardin.

I see from the club website that the Challenge Cup has been given a revamp so that it will now include more Scottish clubs from outwith the SPFL, top division under 20 sides and even clubs from Wales and Northern Ireland. The format looks like a right dog’s dinner.

I note that Tier 2 clubs won’t be joining till Round 3. It won’t make any difference to us. We always lose in it anyway. (I doubt being seeded will alter that at all.)

What concerns me most is the inclusion of the top division under 20s sides. This feels like the thin end of a wedge that will eventually see them allowed to play in the lower leagues. I know similar provision happens in Spain etc with reserve teams but the Scottish scene has unique characteristics that make me uncomfortable at the thought.

Edited to add. I just took in the fact that the draw will be regionalised. Fat chance of me getting to a a game then. (But maybe we’ll be in the North for that too.)

There have also been changes to the laws of the game. We’ll need to see how those work out.