Being vigil-ant again
Once more unto the vigil/demo dear friends. As B&B (I don't know that Bush is a bed - though the world might be a safer place if he just stayed in it - but Blair is certainly his breakfast) attempt extremely dangerous tricks while losing friends and failing to influence people, we had better watch out. There are ways to contain Saddamn Hussein without killing off half of Iraq. 'Regime change' might be nice but at what cost? The destruction of minorities around the world (China, Russia, Indonesia, Burma etc) by authoritarian regimes acting in the name of 'anti-terrorism'? The loss of any legitimacy the USA and UK may still hold in international relations (not a lot regarding the former, and decreasing regarding the latter)? The continuation of the move away from human rights and international law in international relations in favour of the might is right doctrine? The fomenting of more al Qaeda-style attacks on the West? Killing even more ordinary Iraqis than the West currently does through sanctions?

Interesting encounter on the vigil last week. Along comes a reporter who is sent in my direction. "Who are you from?" she enquired. There with my 'Justice Not Terror Coalition' hat on, that was my answer. "Are you a local farmer?" she said. It was then I twigged, before she did because she must have been on auto pilot, that she was actually looking for the protest about countryside depopulation. I sent her in the right direction, which was immediately around the corner in fact. Well, I suppose I could have formed an instant 'Farmers Against the War' but that wouldn't have been fair. And the countryside needs support (no, not over fox hunting and the like but rural support services like buses and alternatives to straight farming as a source of income).

Nice piece by John Pilger in the British mag New Statesman (19th September) gave an indication of what kind of pressure is being exerted 'as we speak' in the USA's effort to have a war. He gave a run down on what George Dubya Bush's Da, G Bush Senior, and the USA got up to 12 years ago in the run in to the Gulf war, and he details the 'campaign of bribery, blackmail and threats'. For example, "Minutes after Yemen voted against the resoilution [my misspelling - Billy) to attack Iraq, a senior American diplomat told the Yemeni ambassador: "That was the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast." Within three days, a US aid programme of $70m to one of the world's poorest countries was stopped.. ....." The media did not report the mass expulsion, ill treatment and even torture of Yemenis in Saudi Arabia. This kind of action by the USA and Saudi Arabia almost makes Saddam Hussein look good. We can extrapolate from all that what the USA is engaged in today (including big bribes to poor countries).

The USA-manufactured 'crisis' over Iraq is an obscenity. There is a problem with Iraq, yes. But there are a million and one other problems as well - many of whose roots can be traced back to the USA. This is where the old Christian adage about taking the beam out of your own eye before taking the little splinter out of someone else's eye comes to the fore. A final comment; "Be alert. This country needs lerts."

Bogger it anyway
I don't always take my own advice but this month I did (see my musings last issue). Signed up for an evening class. It's in bog oak carving, the first such class in Belfast and possibly in Norn Iron I am led to believe. Cue all the old bog jokes; what is the bog standard (use of that term got Mr Tony Blair in trouble), for peat's sake, and the reactionary 'you can take the man from the bog but not the bog from the man' becomes 'you can take the man from the bog oak but not the bog oak from the man'. A previous time I lamented the situation of a young woman apologising for her 'bogger' accent. I have also written about the difficulty of weaning myself off use of peat in the garden. Bog oak itself was often the only wood the peasantry had access to in past times when the land became deforested and landlords controlled what was left. So bogs are pretty deep in the Irish psyche. [Ed - usually a few metres deep in fact - and they seem to feature big in your column which is maybe appropriate given that they're wet, spongy, dark and full of dead material] [Billy - But a mine of biodiversity and a treasure trove of the past! Just like my Colm!]

However bog oak carving is fascinating in many ways. The magic is not only in working with your hands on a versatile raw material which may be 5,000 years old (like when the Céide Fields were lived in! See Nonviolence quiz on the INNATE website) but also what symbolism this has. While bog oak or bog wood is presumably not unique to Ireland as there are some other countries with bogs maybe it's the place where it's most readily available - and Ireland leads the world in tree ring dating. [Ed - I never knew tree rings dated] [Billy - They've been doing it for millennia]

A web search on ‘Irish bog oak’ threw up plenty. You can buy pagan/Druidic wands made of bog oak - I suppose they find it symbolic of ancient pre-Christian eras and also of survival in a world of decay. Though the process of survival, in the wet and anaerobic (as opposed to aerobics, which is a different thing altogether and where it is the survival of the fittest) conditions of the bog is straightforward, it feels somehow miraculous to be working with something so old , maybe fifty times older than anything else we might have in our houses, for example.

The whole process is fascinating. First of all you have to get your bog oak. Now there are places in Ireland where it (or the bleached bog pine) are just lying there for the taking, uncovered by bog cutting, drainage or reclamation. But not where we went. We were informed we had permission to take it from this particular field by the shores of the lough. No, you don't said the elderly woman passing on her bicycle. The farmer owner when approached was friendly and helpful, yes, you can. My bog oak companion had said he'd bring a chain saw, which he didn't, so carrying the wood to our means of transportation was more difficult than I expected, and it was a hot day. But we worked well together and I brought home enough for myself and to share with a couple of classmates.

As my wood had been lying on the surface for some time it needed a good clean both to get off the soil and to dislodge some of the inhabitants. Maybe a pressure hose would have dislodged more of the lodgers but my ordinary garden hose seemed to do the job. However when I got sufficiently far in the carving to oil the wood (half and half turpentine and linseed oil) I discovered a number of doomed inhabitants who had been still lurking in the crevasses - slaters, spiders and a couple of worms. Sorry, folks, I won't get my St Francis of Assisi badge.

Anyway, Draiguna the friendly bog dragon (for that is who has emerged from the bog wood) and myself are getting on very well, in fact we got really well oiled together the other night (on that turps and linseed mix you know). I know the name but don't know the sex of my friend the dragon yet (their name might indicate female gender but it could be culturally imperialist to make assumptions about dragon culture regarding names seeing as internationals are always mystified by Irish names, for example). They are friendly and deep creatures and have a wicked and cutting sense of humour, pretty black humour in fact, even though they have a heart of oak, and I do expect our relationship will be plane sailing and not get bogged down. On that note I think I'll let this item peater out rather than drag on and it resulting in the Headitor trying to turf me out. (Ed - A pity you didn't bog off and do something useful for a change, like take up bog snorkelling).

Forgotten authors, No.96
This one is really an offshoot of the last item on bog oak, in particular the bit about linseed oil. Pub Quiz question ; Give the real name of the then famous Norn Iron author of the first half of the 20th century, now somewhat neglected, who adopted the nom de plume of Lynn Doyle from the full humorous pseudonym of 'Lynn C Doyle'. Answer; Leslie Alexander Montgomery, born 1873. But, no, he is not the author, as a humorous site on the web suggests, of 'Oiling Cricket Bats'. His works include 'Ballygullion' and 'An Ulster Childhood'. Here's a short piece of socially dated but politically bang up to date observance from his chapter 'Drums and Fifes' in 'An Ulster Childhood', published in the inauspicious year of 1921:

"...the unknown Home Ruler remained to me an object of fear and suspicion, hateful as an individual, but in association an incubus. The United Irish League was at that time the body through which Celtic Ireland sought political regeneration, and the League Rooms were as abominable to me as the Temple of Dagon to a devout Israelite of old. Even in the daytime its green shutters had a sinister look. I would not willingly have gone past the building after nightfall.

'How I laughed not long ago to hear our little Roman Catholic maid plead to be excused from an evening errand that would have led her past the neighbouring Orange Lodge. It was Lodge night, she said, and she wouldn't go near the place for anything. But the incident illuminated my childhood. I saw that many a little Catholic, side by side with whom I had trotted to school in outward friendliness and inward mistrust, must have felt towards me as I did towards him. The pleasant yellow of the Orange Lodge that smiled so reassuringly upon me, must to him have glimmered malignantly through the mists of inveterate tradition." And so on he goes with his gentle but usually accurate observances. He deserves a bit of a come back.

Anyway, I hope you're well settled into the autumn routines and things are going smoothly. And so we begin the long descent into winter. But winter too has its advantages and without it then summer wouldn't really be summer. Come to think of it, this year summer wasn't really summer anyway, but you know what I mean. See you next month, until then, slán abhaile and if you're already abhaile then slán anyway (Discuss the etymological possibility that the US term 'so long' is derived from the Irish farewell greeting 'slán').