An Irishman abroad

The Streets of Philadelphia

Allow me if you will, Dear Reader, the indulgence of telling you a wee story that some of you may have heard before, but bear with me, for I do feel that it has a certain significance to my Philadelphia Travelogue…

Almost two years ago, in the summer of 2001, I was lucky enough to have a visit from my younger brother, the soon to be famous rapping magician, ‘A.D.’ came over to visit me. One of the days he was over, I took him to see the Big Balls of Brussels – The Atomium, as well as the wee balls of Brussels on Manekin Pis.

Hungry from all these balls, we went for a bite to eat. “It’s my treat, he offered”. Wondering where we should go, and wanting to show him somewhere nice, I decided upon ‘La Rue de Bouchers’ (The Butchers’ street), just off La Grand Place in the centre of the old city part of Brussels. It’s a cute, cobbled street with dozens of restaurants with waiters standing outside, trying to tempt the tourists in by pointing out the wonderful window displays, which contain marvellous collections of all variations of fresh seafood. I say tourists, because there is absolutely no way that the locals would pay the price that they charge for feeding you in this neighbourhood, but unfortunately we didn’t discover this fact until we had taken our place at a table on the street. Rather than say something that might offend, we sat back and pretended that we did this sort of thing all the time.

We decided that we would order ‘the sea food combination special’ containing several types of fish, mussels, crab, shrimp and lobster. It was expensive, but we decided that because it was a banquet for two, that it would work out cheaper in the end. It was only after the red wine had arrived and we had toasted ourselves and on how great life was, as we sat in the sun watching the world go by, that the conversion rate from Belgian Francs to British Pounds finally set in. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of this at the time.
Upon reflection, I realise that this is probably the reason I haven’t seen Ady in Belgium ever since – he’s still paying the visa bill for the lunch!

A few minutes later, the waiter arrived, with various instruments that could only have been taken from a medieval dental surgery. There were pliers, lances and extremely long thin forks that looked like they were used by the ancient Egyptians to remove the brains of their dead pharaohs during the mummification process.

Not wanting to look like the rank amateurs we were to this particular part of the world’s culture we kindly thanked the waiter, whilst exchanging nervous glances. In desperate need of help, we got chatting to the only other people sat at a table outside the restaurant – three ladies to our right talking to each other in American accents, whilst using these instruments to eat some lobster.

“Looks good!”, I said.
“It tastes great”, we were informed.
The conversation progressed whilst Ady and myself stealthily watched how they ate with these things. They picked up on our Irish accents and wanted to know whereabouts in Ireland we were from.
“Just outside Belfast” was our standard reply, forgetting that we weren’t talking to people from back home who would be trying to suss out ‘what foot we kicked with’ – the silly and sad conversation that we have with each other when talking to people who are from Northern Ireland.
Questions such as ‘Where are you from?’, ‘What’s your name?’, ‘What school did you go to?’, ‘What sports do you play / watch?’, though innocent enough on the face of it, are all designed to determine whether the person is a Protestant or Catholic. But I’ll return to this later.

“I’m half Irish – my grandfather was from Moira!” exclaimed the eldest one, a fine looking woman in her forties who reminded me of Steve Tyler from Aerosmith (well come on, Dear Reader – he would make a fine looking woman!).
Moira is a small town, 20 minutes drive from where we’re from.

“My name is Kathleen McAfee’

“McAfee? – That’s the name of the first girl I ever kissed!” I said, referring to Laura McAfee, a girl from a long way back (and that’s a story that I’m not going to indulge in).

When we asked where they were from, they informed us that they were all from Philadelphia.

“That’s were Rocky was filmed, isn’t it?!”, Ady exclaimed.
“Sure it is!”
“Were all the scenes in the movie filmed from there?” he asked. We were both getting excited – Rocky was one of the great movies from our childhood. We loved that movie, and watched it time and time again. We could quote scenes line for line. We especially enjoyed taking the piss out Ady because in the movie Rocky’s wife is called Adrian as well. Unfortunately for my brother Adrian, his excuse that it was spelled differently, didn’t ring true, especially when the credits rolled at the end of the movie.
Oh the fun we had….

But I digress.

“Yep, the whole movie was filmed on location in Philadelphia” one of the others told us.
“In fact on July forth – they organise the Rocky Run. You can do the run he did in the movie, through the Italian markets and finishing up the steps at the Art Museum.”

“How cool is that?!” we both said – “that would be soooo cool to do!”

“Well if you ever find yourselves in Philadelphia, here’s my card. It’s got both mine and Vicky’s number on it because we work together” Kathleen said as she handed me her card. “Give us a call and we’ll show you guys the sights. There’s plenty of Irish bars for you guys if you feel a bit homesick!”.

And with that we looked at the card.

It read:
‘Federal Bureau of Investigation
Special Agent Kathleen McAtee’

In the upper left corner of the card, there was an embossed FBI logo. This was the real deal!

“I suppose we should leave the drugs and guns in Ireland?” I quipped.
“Yes I guess you’d better” came the stern reply.
“So are you all FBI agents?”
“They are but I’m not – I’m Bernie. I’m an ex-professional cyclist” the third lady said - like it was the most normal thing in the world.

After that we talked about their holiday plans. They had flown into Manchester that morning, where they had had some breakfast, they were now having lunch in Brussels and were going to Paris that night for dinner.
They were then going to visit Florence, Venice, Milan and Rome, before coming back through Germany to Paris and Brussels again by the following Thursday (keep in mind that this was a Friday - bloody Yanks!)

Our food arrived and we started to wrestle with our seafood. Thankfully our newfound American friends finished their meal and then headed for the train to Paris, after all – they did have a tight schedule; so we were spared the embarrassment of trying to eat our food in front of them.


We said our good byes and we continued with our struggle for food, dreaming about the time when we would get a chance to take up this nice invitation.

********

Fast-forward a couple of years to the present day and I am working on a really frustrating project for Philips ‘Let’s make things better, my arse’ in Andover, 25 miles north of Boston, Massachusetts. Having spent the best part of 12 hours a day for a month wrestling with Philips bureaucracy and my evening hours lying in bed watching TV, I was determined to do something interesting on my last weekend in this part of the world (for the time being at least).

A couple of weeks ago, I had discussed with my colleague Dennis and another Dutch guy, Peter about going to Philadelphia. Dennis was soon to be going to Seattle and was keen on seeing Philadelphia. Peter’s girlfriend lived in Philadelphia and went there regularly to visit her.

We made plans to go on President’s Day weekend, which is a long weekend in the US. However, in the week prior to that, Dennis was moved to Seattle completely out of the blue, Peter announced that he would be helping his girlfriend move apartment and the largest snow storm since 1978 hit the US east coast. This combination of events only left the last weekend of the trip to travel down there. Pondering this, I remembered the meeting with the three ladies in Brussels, so taking a deep breath, I phoned the number on the card.

“Hi you have reached the extension of Vicky Humphreys. Leave a message and I’ll call you back”. I thought it better to not leave a message but to try again later. I mean, she’d probably think it was some sort of prank call.

I called back a little bit later and this time the phone was answered.
“Hello – Vicky Humphreys extension”
“Hi is Vicky not there at the moment?”
“She has a day off today”
“Can I speak to Kathleen McAfee?”
“This is her speaking”

And so I explained to her who I was, when we had met and why I was calling.
Fair play to her, she did sound as if she remembered us.

And so it came to pass that I nervously walked into a restaurant called Pigalle in the Liberties area of Philadelphia at eight thirty on a Friday evening in the middle of February, to meet two women that I had only the briefest conversation with a couple of years ago.
Not sure what they looked like, I was relieved to discover that the restaurant was a small place and there was only one table occupied with two women. I cautiously approached them, but was pleased to be greeted with a couple of smiles and a “Well if ain’t Jonny Black from Ireland!”

Any reservations I had about about meeting up with these women instantly went away. They made me feel very much at ease and we chatted about our brief meeting all that time ago and how much they enjoyed ‘doing Europe’. I explained why I was in that part of the world and also why Ady couldn’t make it, due to pre-arranged commitments to appear at the British Magicians Annual conference in Blackpool (seriously). BTW Ady - you’re still invited!

After the meal we went to their local across the street. They referred to it as a ‘cop bar’, but it still ain’t too bad.” And there I was, sat with some of their colleagues listening to them chat about their cases.
The major case that they had just finished involved busting a drug and prostitution ring amongst the many go-go bars that Philadelphia has to offer. Apparently they had both went undercover as the manageresses of a go-go bar. Rivetting stuff indeed! (Especially compared to anything that I had to offer by way of interesting tales of my office life at Philips). I sat and listened but was by no means bored. In fact, I felt like an extra in a Cagney and Lacey episode!

Later, I asked about the possibility of seeing the Ireland v Italy rugby match on in any of the bars in town and a few were suggested. The thing was, because of time differences, the match was going to be shown at 09:30 in the morning! After a few phone calls, a few frisking down of suspects and a couple of stakeouts we managed to find out that an English bar called The Dark Horse, but formally known as The Dickens Inn would be showing the game.

Still - Kathleen thought it was a better idea to go to on a pub-crawl to a few of the Irish bars, just to make sure. She explained that her eldest daughter had been quite ill of late, with a fusion of the spine. The poor girl had to wear an abdomen brace 24 hours a day and needed constant supervision. In fact, the day I had called, Vicky was at Kathleen’s looking after her daughter, whilst Kathleen had made a rare excursion to the office. It was pure chance that I had managed to get through to her, because she was hardly ever at that desk.

It turned out that this was one of the few nights that Kathleen had been out, so she wanted to ‘party like the Irish’. I did my best to oblige, but think upon reflection that it was probably a good idea that the night finished when it did. The combination of Bushmills and Guinness was proving just a bit much for her (and she still had to drive home).
Before going home we went to an Irish bar near the hotel, called the Black Sheep. They both had their cars so Vicky gave me a lift in her car, via the Dark Horse. I thought this was a bit strange, but she said that it would help in the morning if I were to get a taxi to the pub. At least I would recognise the neighbourhood. This would prove to be very useful.

When we arrived in the neighbourhood of the bar, it was really difficult to get anywhere to park. The remainder of the snowstorm meant that several cars were still snowed in, abandoned, and parking spaces that were empty where occupied by large piles of ploughed snow. Vicky dropped me off at the bar and went off to find a space.

“Are you sure you’re OK?” I asked
“I’m fine! And if not, I’m packing my piece!”

After a few nightcaps at The Black Sheep we headed for home. I said goodbye to Kathleen and she apologised for not being able to take me on the sightseeing tour the following day. I explained to her in all truth, that she had already done enough by actually meeting me, and Vicky had already offered to take me on a quick sightseeing tour.

I got into the car with Vicky worried about Kathleen’s ability to drive, but realising the fact that if she were stopped, that she would probably have no problem getting away with it, thanks to a quick flash of her badge. As we were driving the few blocks to my hotel, I noticed a small box on the floor in the well between the two seats. I asked what it was for, and Vicky switched it on. Before I new it there was a police siren going off and the traffic in front parted as we drove through. Aware of the fact that I was behaving like a little kid, but unable to do anything about it, I said things like “This is sooooo cool!” as we drove through the parting traffic. I felt like flashing my Northern Ireland driver’s license at the staring inhabitants of the slowing traffic but thought that might have been taking the piss just a wee bit.

She knocked off the siren as I arrived at the hotel, and I got out of the car, trying to look as cool as I could as the bell-boy and the valet parking attendant watched on. We said our goodbyes and I went to my room, which I should point out was on the 20th floor. (This is the highest up I’ve ever been in a hotel and I mention it now for no other reason than that).

I set my alarm for 08:00 on the Saturday morning. (Unbelievable the things you do for the love of sport) and promptly fell asleep with a stupid grin on my face from the ‘taxi’ ride home.



07:58 and I waken up without need of an alarm. If only I was that keen during the week. Showered and kitted out with my Ireland rugby top on, I head out and hail a cab. The taxi driver is Russian and speaks very little English. I have the address of the bar, but he doesn’t seem to understand where I mean.
A few minutes later and we start driving around in circles when I recognise something from the night before when Vicky had shown me the bar. I get out and pay the taxi driver. 8 bucks including tip – this was a lot cheaper than Boston, even with the scenic tour. Glad of the fact that I was in a more reasonably priced town, I walked into the bar, which was upstairs above a restaurant that occupied the ground floor.

At the top of the stairs, I saw two members of staff, a girl and a fella a couple of years older than me. The place was shrouded in silence. I looked at my watch. It was 09:05 in the morning.

“Are you showing the rugby today?”
“Aye we are” the guy replied in a broad Belfast accent. “It’s 20 bucks”.

So for two weeks running, I ended up in a bar early in the morning, paying 20 dollars to get in. No one tell the people at the Dubliner this.

Still, I was happy just to get a chance of seeing the match. (I should state that I have since found out that the satellite company that shows the rugby charges per head in the bar. In fact, the girl at the top of the stairs was from the company).
I received an ink stamp on my hand from the girl, went to the bar and ordered a water and settled into my seat, very close to the big screen, although there were several TV’s throughout the maze of bars all showing the game. There were less than a dozen people in the bar and about half of them were English. (The England v Wales game was to be shown afterwards).

As it got closer to kick off more people arrived. As luck would have it, it seemed that only English people at the bar surrounded me. The Irish supporters were at the other end of the bar. I decided to stick with my seat – I had a good spot, close to the bar and with a good view of the TV. I was to regret it later, but if I were blessed with the benefit of being able to tell the future, I wouldn’t be stuck in my hotel room approaching midnight, typing this out!

Actually, a rerun of the Mike Tyson fight is just about to start, so I’ll love you and leave you as I get into bed to watch it. Yes I know he won, but it was the one sporting event of the weekend that I wanted to see but was unable to, so I hope you don’t mind,

Good night Dear Reader…

FORTY NINE SECONDS???! FORTY NINE F**KING SECONDS!! And most of that was spent with them wrestling on the canvas and then counting Etienne out! What sort of a fight was that? If I had known that the fight had only lasted that long I wouldn't have bothered leaving this travelogue. I mean come on - the guy must have taken a dive!

...At least that was my initial reaction until I saw all the television replays. (Let's face it - they had plenty of opportunity to show them after such a short fight). I don't think Tyson's thrown a punch like that since the last time a woman said no to him!

But I digress...

Just when I was about to get out of bed, Showtime TV, the broadcasters who had paid millions of dollars for the privelage of showing the latest Tyson debacle, announced that the following program would be America's most adult reality TV series. Apparently the fly-on-the-wall documentary titled 'Family Business' followed one of america's far from average families as they worked on their family business - the "Seymour Butts" adult video empire.

Sounded interesting and to be honest it was, in a freaky kinda way. The cameras followed Seymour Butts - not his real name I was disappointed to find out - as he went about his daily chores such as getting his son up in the morning for breakfast and then taking him to school. When they arrived at the school (and this is the best bit)... SCHOOL WAS CLOSED! Oh the comedic entertainment of it all...

I don't know about you Dear Reader, but when I was at school - we knew weeks in advance when we were getting off and we would spend those weeks planning what wonderful things we would get up to. We'd talk excitedly about all the comic 'japes' that we would get into a la "The Hardy Boys". Of course once we got to that day - we would have spent too much energy planning things and then running about half the night, the night before, so that when the morning dawned on our precious day off, we simply scratched our arses and rolled over back to sleep. (Our own arses and in seperate beds I hasten to add).

I guess several years later somethings never change...

So here we were, Dear Reader, the great US viewing public, expected to believe that Seymour Butts accidentally took his son to school on labour day. We are then left on the edge of our seats as Seymour phones Mother, the accounts department of the business, to see if she can look after the son that day, because he has a hectic day of "auditions, editting and a blind date for lunch".

For yes, Dear viewer, we are to discover that our unlikely hero Seymour Butts, despite having the flourishing family business, the cute kid, the loving mother, is a loser when it comes to love. This heart felt confession is given to us as he searches the serveral web-based dating agencies that he is a member of.
"I have met some really nice girls in the past but when it comes to speaking about my work the reaction I receive is always the same", he tells us sorrowfully.

Luckily for Mr Butts, his mother, Saggy, (OK perhaps not!) is available for baby sitting duty. Much to my annoyance, the documentary doesn't explain how the accounts department will cope in her absence.

So after dropping off the kid, Seymour heads off into the hive of activity that is Seymour Butts Productions, where we find the editor going through some sort of major crisis.

"It's a disaster!" he exclaims.
"What's a disaster?!"

"Please tell us what the disaster is. Please tell us!" is what we, the US viewing public are screaming at our television screens as we are drawn into the compelling world of adult video productions.

But I digress.

Whaddya mean you weant to know what the disaster is, Dear Reader?

Oh OK then, back to Seymour....

"I can't use any of this!", he says pointing at the screen.
The camera pans to the monitor that is the subject of the editor's frustration.

Now, I hope you understand, Dear Reader, that I am by no means, any form of expert on this sort of thing but what it looked like to me (and I can't be sure about this) was that there were two women obviously in the middle of excitedly getting ready to go out for the evening.

I say this because they both displayed faces covered in lots of make up as if they were going out to either work the bars in search of sad, lonely blokes to prey on for drinks, or to go work the streets and prey on sad, lonely men for money.
I say they were 'getting ready' because being american - they had put their make-up on before clothes of any description (apart from some very complicated looking underwear).

We, The Viewing Public, are not shown what their outfits are like but I have no doubt that they will be dressed very nicely, thank-you very much. I suppose you have to make that sort of an effort for the opera.
I say the opera because it seemed that they were 'singing' some of their favourite tunes into some form of microphone, being held my a man off camera. It sounded quite different from any opera music I had heard before but I guess that's progress for you - and let's face it - I don't know that many operas.

It seemed like some amature naked opera fanatics karaoke night.

"I can't use these facials!!" the editor explains, presumably referring to their heavy made-up faces.
"Why what's wrong with them?" Seymour asks, going way down in my estimation - I mean, come on Dear Reader, how is he supposed to ever find the right woman, when he can't even tell the difference between a good and bad make-up job?!

Just then, a strange thing happened. The microphone that these two ladies had been singing into, sort of, err, well... leaked. I know it sounds crazy, but there was a distinctly visible slight seepage from this microphone. Just as I looked a bit closer, the camera cut to Seymour.

"That is not a crisis! Just use a different camera angle! Use your imagination for Christ's sake! Now I have some auditions to take care of, I don't want to be bothered if this is what you call a crisis!"

And off Mr Butts walked, leaving me and I'm sure the rest of the viewing public to wonder just how much money there really was to be made in filming two semi-naked Opera fans singing into a malfunctioning microphone.....

But I digress - enough of this! - I have to get back to the Philadelphia Story.

Now, where was I? Oh yes - stuck in a pub at 09:30 on a Saturday morning surrounded by English supporters getting ready to cheer on the mighty Irish against the Italians (me - not the English supporters).

After listening to some wheezing eejits in the studio discussing what they considered to be the finer points of the game, they cut to start of the match. The number of Irish in the bar was considerably less than the number of English. There even a couple of aul Welsh fellas sat to my left getting involved in a bit of a wind up with the English guys beside me.

Based on their very loud conversation and also the fact that they had practically sat on top of me, I heard that they were consultants of some sort. They never mentioned the system but I was pretty sure it was SAP. Trust me - it brings out the worst kind of eejits.

Anyway, Ireland did not, to be fair, start off well and as the game progressed the English cheers for the Italians became louder than the Irish cheers for Ireland. The guy immediately behind me, even went so far as to say "If they play like that against us, we'll fu*king kill 'em". Much to the agreement of his loud and obnoxious mates.

Upon hearing this, I filled up with the sort of rage that I very, very, rarely ever experience, but sport just sort of seems to bring it out in me, in a therapeutic sort of way.
For the most part, I like to think of myself as fairly laid back and easy going (disagreements on an email please!) but this just struck a nerve with me. I looked over my shoulder and they grinned back at me. Shaking my head I looked away again and returned to the game, insides seething. Praying for all my might that we beat them when they come for a wee visit to Dublin.

What were you expecting? That I would get into some bar scrap with a bunch of ex-rugby playing public school boy twats? I may be a lot of things, Dear Reader, but I'm not stupid!

Anyway - the second half was a different story and Ireland scored a few tries. The leading scorer and man of the match for the Irish for the second game running was a fellow Ulster Protestant called David Humphries, which made things even more satisying for me.

People have asked me why there isn't a united Irish football team when we can have a united Ireland rugby team. My answer is always the same - whilst I have no problems whatsoever cheering on the green of Ireland for the rugby, I could never see me cheering on the green of an all-Ireland football team. And there is not an easy answer as to why this would be the case.

I suppose football is and always has been a different type of sport in terms of the schools that play it and the type of people that support it compared with rugby. I hate to say it, but football is more working class.

I went to a grammar school that frowned upon football but encouraged rugby. In fact a wonderful testament to that is Garry Longwell, the second rower for Ireland that has played in each of Ireland's games this season and been capped almost 30 times for his country. We're all very proud of him!

But still football - is and always will be - my number one sport and at school I played with many more skillful footballers than I did rugby players. It was the sport we all played for hours. At lunchtime, after school, at the weekends. During holidays we used to go to the local rugby pitches, make some football goals and play there all day long for days on end. We'd take a picnic and not go anywhere near home until it was dark or dinner time. When it got dark, we went and played on the street outside home underneath the 'floodlights' of our street, dodging cursing drivers and pissing off the neighbours. Or we played in our back garden, pissing off daddy but loving every minute of it. I suppose football is more tribal.

Until that is, when rugby gets to the Six Nations. Then it gets very, very tribal indeed. It's all the various Celts in the form of Scotland, Wales, France, Ireland and to a lesser extent the Italians playing each other with the added incentive of getting a chance to have a go at taking on the might of the Anglo-Saxon huns at their own game at their own game. And it is such a tough sport! There is nothing more satisfying than seeing a member of the opposition getting flattened on the pitch by "one of us".

But the main reason why rugby is a united Irish sport (and I might have some disagreement on this point) is because it is a Protestant sport in the North and played by the wealthy in the South.

I know what you see on the TV or may read about the "oppressive Protestants" in the "North of Ireland"...

[BTW - I love that phrase - the Nationalists are so creative when it comes to ways of avoiding the name of my country. Rather than refer to the two countries of Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland, they refer to "The North of Ireland", "The Six Counties", or even "The Occupied State" whilst talking referring to the South as the "Free State"]

... and I know I have gone on long enough, so I'll get off my high (white) horse in a minute. But basically, despite what you may read, as a whole, we are the more tolerant race in Northern Ireland. None more so than in the world of sport.

Because the Nationalists have their gaelic sports and because these sports are inextricably linked to nationalist politics, especially thanks to their rule that states members of the security forces cannot take part in gaelic sports, Protestants are alienated from this world.

On the other hand, traditionally Protestant sports, such as football and rugby have long been played by Catholics, although it was only in the last 10 years that the Gaelic association officially allowed their members to take part in non-gaelic sports.

In football there used to be a trophy called the Home Nations. This was at the end of every other season, the countries of the United Kingdom taking on each other in a mini-tournament. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would play each other and in a similar fashion to the six nations, passions were raised as we got the chance to take on our Celtic cousins, whilst dreaming of a win over the Anglo-Saxon huns at another one of their games.

Until that was, when England and Scotland officially decided they didn't want to play in it because Wales and Northern Ireland weren't good enough. The winners of the last tournament and still current holders of the competition - yep - you've guessed it - NORN F**KING IRON!!! Shove that up your pipe and smoke it!

Altogether now, "Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling....."

To be continued! (and this time no sport sex politics - just Philadelphia - I promise!)