My Mother gave birth to me 22/02/1957. Childbirth is a painful but joyous occasion, but my Mother was alone in a foreign country, on the run hiding a shameful secret. You see this was the 1950’s and my Mother was an Irish Catholic and I was born out of wedlock. This was the age of the Magellan Laundry’s where unwed Mothers would be cared for by Nuns, and would have to work in laundrys to repay the Nuns for the care they received. The children were then put into Industrial school and orphanages where if they were lucky they’d be adopted by good Catholic families. To make matters worse my Father was a Catholic Priest one of Gods Holy and Anointed virtually Gods shadow on earth as far as Irish society went. My parents were no spring chickens, my Mother at 17 years of age had gone to Plymouth England to train as a nurse. In England training was free, whereas in Ireland training had to be paid for, and my Mother was from a large family with few funds. Her arrival in Plymouth coincided with the arrival of Hitlers Luftwaffe, because Plymouth was a huge naval base it was blitzed mercilessly, in fact after London it was the most heavily bombed City in England. My Mother used to stay with the intensive care patients during the heavy bombing. They couldn’t be moved to the bomb shelters, so my Mother opted to stay with them during this ordeal. When she qualified as a State Registered Nurse in 1944 a commendation was placed in the bottom left hand corner of her Certificate thanking her for her bravery. That certificate hangs proudly in my living room to this day. Mum went on to study midwifery in Glasgow after the war, until her dear Father became terminally ill in Ireland. She then returned and nursed him until his death. She then joined the Irish Army as a nurse and stayed with them until my arrival. There she met my Father. Now I don’t know too much about him, but I’ll tell you what I do know. Like my Mother he was born into a large Irish family, and after school he went to a seminary where he studied to become a Catholic Priest. He was a member of the Kiltegan Order of Missionary Priests. They were formed to commemorate the anniversary of the St Patrick’s mission to Ireland. Consequently he was sent to Nigeria in Africa where he worked until succumbing to a tropical disease, and had to be medivacced back to Ireland. He had to be put somewhere, so when he recovered sufficiently he was attached to the Irish Army as one of their team of Chaplains. There he met my Mother. Once again I don’t know too much about their relationship, but they hit it off like a house on fire. At work they were respectable Conservative Irish people who knew their place. At weekend they’d jump in the car and toured the country together, my Mother even took her Priest home to meet the family in Tipperary. They were fond of him, he was good fun enjoyed a drink and was a great man to belt out a good Irish rebel song. But, then nature took its course and my Mum became pregnant, and it was not an Immaculate Conception. Cue the dramatic music, I can’t imagine what my Parents went through psychologically. They were products of Holy Catholic Ireland, caught up in an age old very human dilemma. My Mum got on the boat and went to London, she was alone and must have been in bits, but on 22/02/1957 she gave birth to me in East Ham General hospital. My Father joined her about a year later, I imagine they put a gap between their disappearances to avoid suspicion, but at the end of the day God only knows what was going through their heads. Anyway they found themselves together in London, a tiny nuclear family, and to my romantic Catholic mind not unlike Joseph Mary and the baby Jesus, themselves alone against the World. My Father couldn’t produce a CV, and at nearly 50 deeply institutionalised by a lifetime as a Priest totally unqualified to provide for his family. He was incredibly lucky in one way, he found himself sharing a house with another Irish family the Armstrongs. Ivor, Irish to the core, he’d been very firmly established in Irish society, he worked in the bank. It usually took a crowbar to get someone out of the Bank it was seen as such a prestigious job. So God knows what he did to find himself in London working as a lowly truck driver for British Rail, (best ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies). And, of course Jo, Ivor wife who like my Mother was an Irish nurse and Mother to little Sally a babe in arms like myself. Ivor and my Dad were best mates and would take off to the pub, where they’d talk football rugby hurling, politics and religion. Jo and my Mum would push their prams around Streatham Common like doting Mums the World over. What could possibly go wrong. I’ve very fussy memories of those days, i remember my Dad returning from work, he’d always have a chocy bar or sweetie hidden in one of his pockets and I’d have to find it. There would be squeals of delight as we wrestled each other on the armchair. Unfortunately, the work he did was illegal and very dangerous. My Father opened a business “buying and selling”, it was financed by London gangsters. How much my Father knew about the business he was involved in God knows. My Uncle Ivor years later told me that once in the pub my Father confided in him and confessed to being caught up in the criminal underworld,Dad even told him his Boss regularly carried a gun. That’s dreadful Barney you’d best get out as quickly as you can. Ivor you’ve not heard the worst of it, my Boss doesn’t carry the gun to fight the enemy should they approach him, he carries it to kill himself should they try to capture him because his enemies are know to torture their enemies pitilessly, truly a fate worse than death. Now the next series of events I’m not 100% sure about. Long story short, my Father was arrested and with other criminals was convicted of fraud and imprisoned for 18 months. He was actually arrested in Stroud at a home for Catholic priests being re trained after absences from the Church etc? Once again God knows. It seems my Father realising the mess he was in reached out to the Church who took back their Prodigal Son. Unfortunately, they didn’t take my Mother or myself. I was shipped off to Liverpool where I stayed with my Fathers sister and her huge family. My Mother went back to Ireland she avoided her hometown and went back to her nursing profession in the City of Waterford. My families story made the front pages of the gutter press, they do love a good scandal. It was front page of the News(Screws) of the World and a paragraph in the Daily Telegraph. And that is where my Auntie Jo and Uncle Ivor heard our story. Like my Parents disappearance from the Irish Army, my parents were so ashamed they left with no explaination whatsoever. But to their credit, the Armstrongs remained staunch lifelong friends and stood by my parents through thick and thin. Ivor told me years later, that he could never figure out how my Father had an answer for every tricky theological argument he throw at my Father. Ivor was an atheist/agnostic and of course my Father was deeply Catholic to the bone. My Mother loved Ivor and Jo soo much. I remember her saying to me, Oh what I wouldn’t give for a pray from that man to God for me, this was said with a sigh cos Ivor was the last person to pray to our Invisible friend, but my Mum told me Ivor was such a principled man she was just in awe of him. As a family we were caught up in a tsunami thrown this way and that. After my Fathers release from prison, he was sent to Florida and served there to the end of his life as a Parish Priest. My Mum was a singleton again, working as a in Waterford. I had a new role in life I was now essentially an orphan sent off to an Irish Industrial School. My Aunts husband found me to be the straw that broke the camals back, and I was put a a plane and sent to Ireland where my Mothers Brother picked me up and took my to St Michaels Industrial School County Waterford. The Aftermath, or at least what I know about it. My Father went on to become a Parish Priest in Florida where he faithfully served his flock till he died. Except that in the summer holidays he’d jump on a plane and live with my Mother in the tiny bedsit she rented for a few weeks. I was away at Industrial/boarding school so she was alone except for the summer holidays when the three of us all squished in together. He was living a double life. Of course as a five year old I was told nothing of this, I was told that Dad was a businessman making his fortune and that in a few years he’d return and we’d all live happily ever after. I do believe that was their plan, but every years my Father drew more and more remote from me. I think it was dawning on him the impossibility of our situation. When he died in his 59th year I was sixteen and didn’t shed a tear, the cuddly fun loving Dad I knew before his imprisonment was a stranger to me. My Mum lived alone in a bedsit in Bournemouth, she wanted more contact with me, it was impossible in Catholic Ireland, but she got a job in Bournemouth nursing a celebrities Father in his old age, and I was sent to a boarding school in nearby Bridport not too far away. She could visit me and I couldn’t stay with her in school holidays. Life went on and eventually bought a nice family home in Poole but we had no family to fill it. Mum only had one friend, and the house was furnished as if in preparation for a quick escape. I was moved to a day school, but of course it had to be a Catholic school and was miles from where we lived so I didn’t have any real friends. As a child I changed as much as my Father, I went from being a happy squealing child the centre of his Parents Universe to a veteran of a Victorian type institution in Ireland and two less Victorian Catholic Boarding schools, I was very very lonely and rather weird. I got no qualifications from school I had no confidence and got a job as a painter and decorator. I eventually joined the army just to get out of my dead end life. My Mother went back to Ireland, and presented herself as a respectable widow. She lived with her family and friends eventually burying all but one surviving sister. Her requiem mass was very well attended and I’m so proud one of the alter boys at the mass Edward MacGelligott had been brought into the World by my Mother in her role as MidWife. Nell MacGelligott this boys Mother despite being very young was my Mums best friend. Marraid Kennedy my Mums boss at the care come where my Mum worked, looked after my Mother as if they were sisters. My Mum used to say to me in her later years in her sweet Irish accent, “ah shure God know I’m no plaster Saint”, but had made peace with her past her present and her future, and if that’s not a Saint I don’t know what is. I did nearly 7 years in the Army and reached the dizzy heights of Private. I wanted to be promoted and make a go of it, but had no confidence. I was very confident when I had a drink and became a very heavy drinker and it became a serious problem in my life. I was at a dead end in the Army so left, my Mum had returned to Ireland so I joined her and endured two years of purgatory. I couldn’t tell anyone about my Priest Father, I couldn’t tell people about my Army past, I was a non person. I move away and did about 10 years of odd seasonal jobs, farm work on Kibbutz Israel, farm work in Greece, Ireland Kent, English teacher in Turkey and worked as a motor cycle courier in London. I eventually married and worked on the buses to support my wife and our son, I stayed nearly 30 years in that job, eventually becoming an instructor both on the road and in the classroom. I’m retired and recently widowed, I’ve had a chance to look back on my life. God didn’t write me an Enid Blyton story. I’ve struggled as did my parents and countless other people, but like my Mother I believe I’m making peace with my past my present and hopefully with God. As if this story is not unusual enough, I have another strange twist to add to the tale. Needless to say I had a very religious upbringing thoroughly schooled in Catholic tradition. However after an absence from the Church during my Army years, I returned to the faith again in Ireland. Ireland was going through a religious revolution, and my practice was questioned by my contemporaries. I realised I knew the Catechism but not the Bible. So I read this and this exposed me to Judaism of course whose teachings are at odds with the teachings of Christianity. Things took another turn when I became very good friends with a devout Muslim from Ghana in West Africa. My friend had studied for the Priesthood in his youth but due to ill health could not pursue this career and ended up in Law and Politics instead. He became my spiritual guide, ironic in a way as my Father had been a Catholic Missionary in West Africa. Bashir my friend told me that the Irish Catholics were great friends to the Africans and told them stories about how they had thrown off the British. Another Irish writer Dervela Murphy described how Muslims Pakistanis maintained that the Catholics were in Pakistan because they loved God, but the Protestants were ther because they hated Islam. Anyway my friendship with Bashir grew and despite at no time being asked to convert, I did so and have followed the way of Muhammed for nearly 40 years. It has grounded me, my alcoholism is fully under control. It’s made me a bit of a pariah as the faith is negatively viewed generally and the media have sensationalised it out of all proportion, but the one thing I’ve learnt from my family’s and my own history is what other people think of you is irrelevant, our relationship with ourselves and our loved ones is the main issue. If we are true to ourselves we will be false to no man. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church has been overly concerned about the reputation rather than the welfare of the children of Catholic Priests. It has caused untold suffering to thousands of Children Mothers, and Fathers, in this matter the Church truly lost the plot, like all institutions it filled with Saints and Sinners. I think this and other scandals have been made worse by stupidity rather than conspiracy. Best to forgive, but never forget, and remember the victims of unrequited love in our prayers.