Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

The Life of Rovo Scrum

The ice-cap on Black Mountain had been slowly retreating for several years, not to mention the mountain, through quarrying. Next year: Lack Mountain. The following year: Ack Mountain.

Yes, summer had come around at long last and it was time to get out of my duffel coat and Aran sweater. I headed into town. At the top of the Grosvenor I noticed on one lamppost an announcement that this was an alcohol-free zone. Who puts these signs up? The Council? The Pioneers? The Saudis? I looked up into the blue sky for inspiration, because I was feeling mighty important. Perhaps like Abe Lincoln or Mary McMahon. (Yes, I know. Who can remember Abe Lincoln.) And I thought to myself: who is there to fairly implement such bye-laws without alienating further the discontented, demoralised kids involved? And that brought me back to Patten.

What a great general. And movie. Played so well by George C. Scott.

On another lamppost was the remains of a Workers Party poster, showing a girl, about twelve-years-of-age, being tortured by a Leonard Cohen or Morrisey album with the slogan, 'Fed Up?', followed by the message, 'Make it work! Make it Workers Party.' I know the lads are rusty on the oul impersonating, it's been a while, but surely even they know that twelve-year-olds can't vote?

On another lamp was a warning that you couldn't park your car here between certain hours. And on another was an RUC poster, warning motorists that if they were parking here between certain hours they should check that they've locked their vehicles and not left any valuables inside. I was glad that the unlimited resources of the state - cardboard warnings to car owners - were being deployed to make life more difficult for potential joy-riders. These posters must cost at least 25p. A hundred.

I walked down the Grosvenor Road, a road I do not like. No offence to the residents. Many years ago there was a buzz about the community here and the girls were pretty despite high unemployment and low incomes and the seasonal sectarian clashes around Roden Street.

Back then the Grosvenor was full of small corner shops, newsagents', butchers', and many pubs, a doctor's, a dentist's and a bicycle shop. And the road through the Royal was never closed so there were places to coort in sheltered doorways. But redevelopment, the Troubles and Brit raiding-parties from the barracks in occupied Mulhouse Street, wrought a mixture of changes and depression. Despite the new housing I still find an air of depression about this part of the road, corralled as it is at the bottom by Westlink and the poisonous fumes of a thousand vehicles an hour.

Up Cullingtree Road and over the bridge above Westlink and into town via College Square North, my pants sticking to me, my feet on fire inside my DMs. Belfast is such a small, friendly place that everybody appears to know everyone else. It is interesting how many motorists will roll down their windows just to wish you the time of day. "Rovo Scrum!" one man shouted at me, his words a bit minced in his tailwind, and I waved back, basking in recognition. He shook his fist, as if to say, "Not an ounce, not one bullet, Dan, and no concrete over the dumps, either!"

"I know, I know," I mouthed back and give him another friendly wave as his wife seemed to punch him in the face and furiously struggled with him to remain behind the wheel. What goes on in marriages isn't our business, but is between husbands, their girlfriends and wives.

I can do a major 'shop' in about fifteen minutes whereas a woman can take up to four Saturdays in succession and will return to the shop with various items of clothing or footwear several times until she gets the right colour, texture, length, size, buttons, stitch, zip, pleat, insole, heel, you name it. Into the shop I went, picked a pair of shorts, asked the assistant's help in choosing a polo shirt, chinos and socks and was out of the store in record time.

Outside Boots' chemist I had to manoeuvre my way around an elderly, balding man with a sandwich board who was trying to catch my attention. In the past MI6 have used many ploys in their attempts to recruit people, including sending bogus winning draws to householders in West Belfast with the prize of a free holiday in Spain where you 'bump into' Mike and Roger who explain that it's they who are paying for your holiday and that they want you to keep an eye on Gerry Kelly in return.

But this latest ploy represented a new low. The old man looked around him furtively, then thrust a card into my hand. It said, "Where will you spend Eternity? Heaven or Hell?" Then he turned and gave out similar cards to other passers-by as a cover.

I am sitting here in my new shorts and polo shirt in Maspalomas, on this all-expenses paid holiday, the setting sun on the horizon filleting the waves in little silver scallops, downtown Belfast a continent away, another life away, people on the Grosvenor probably wanting to have a word in my ear when I return. Tonight it is free Margueritas, and I don't know how things will pan out tomorrow when Mike and Roger call around for breakfast. I expect they'll be disappointed when I tell them that the dumps are definitely somewhere south of the Dundalk/Sligo parallel, and that even if I did know for sure, they wouldn't be getting one ounce or one bullet from Rovo Scrum.

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