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~ Settled back in Jersey, heart still in Ireland….

Back On The Rock

Category Archives: Uncategorized

What Are Your Oldest Clothes?

27 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

This is supposedly the age of throwaway fashion, sweatshop-produced garments that which, in the affluent West, can be worn once or twice and then discarded. Even charity/thrift shops hesitate before accepting them onto their hangers, pricing them at a quid or two. So I got thinking about those garments which do not remotely fall into the throwaway category, our Old Faithfuls.

I once had a denim jacket. I was in my early 20s and won a £50 prize. I splurged on a good pair of jeans and that jacket. It fitted like a glove and it came to Jersey with me when I left home. I must have had it 10 years and would have it today, but I’d outgrown it and, almost as if it realised its likely fate, it went missing, never to reappear.

Then there is my gilet, Exhibit A below. It is a Nike, bought during my Dublin days c2008. Strangely the shop didn’t remove its security tag. It used to set off the odd alert around the town shops until I managed to prise it off. It is comfortable and suitable for most situations in non-extreme temperatures and is still going strong.

Exhibit A

But my pièce de resistance is my long-sleeved running top, Exhibit B. You’ll see it was awarded 20 years ago next month on the occasion of the Jersey Spartan AC Half-Marathon in November 2001. It was the third of nine of these races that I organised. In those days these shirts were highly coveted, being of the long-sleeved variety and therefore most suitable for winter training. It is rare to see long-sleeved T-shirts these days, and they have been largely replaced by thermal base layers. I’m hanging on to it for nostalgia’s sake.

Exhibit B

You’ll note the domain name http://www.jerseyspartan.com. In 2001 the internet was still in its infancy and accessible mainly by dial-up for most people. It was a couple of months previously that 9/11 started to accelerate the age of 24-hour rolling news that we now take for granted. That domain name is still in use 20 years on.

So, can anybody say that they own clothing that is more than 20 years old?

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Is this normal?

21 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized, Writing

≈ 19 Comments

I suddenly stopped what I was doing and thought, “Is this normal? Does anyone else do this?” I was grafting the last sliver of a bar of soap onto a new bar so as not to waste any. Like so.

Exhibit A

I’ve been doing it all my life, just the way I was shown by my mum. Now, as a working class family in Birmingham we weren’t rich but Mum and Dad worked hard to feed and clothe us and pay the rent. They were used to being thrifty, looking for bargains, cheap cuts of meat, squeezing the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube. But soap grafts? I’ve never known anyone else do it. Do you?

Hold on though, there was something else.

Exhibit B

This is a cricket jumper. When you are little your jumpers get too small don’t they? And your mum buys you a bigger one. Oh no, not my mum. As I grew she’d buy a ball or two of white wool and knit an extension. Then another, then a third. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to me to have differing shades of white on the bottom of my jumper with the original stripe (yellow/black in the above example) up around my chest somewhere. The sleeves must have got the same attention. I wondered by the other boys used to giggle.

Did I have the worst mum in the world or are these things quite normal?

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Whistling, a Lost Art?

31 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized, Writing

≈ 11 Comments

A man may whistle and a man may sing
A man can do a thousand things
But a whistling woman and a crowing hen
May bring the Devil out of his den

Maxine Peake

When was the last time a man in a hat walked down your street whistling a merry tune? No, nor me. In fact, was there ever a time when people really whistled? I mean, whistled casually rather than as an entertainment? Maybe that image was more in the imagination – or absorbed from mid-century Hollywood or Elstree Studios films.

However, Charles Dickens in Pickwick Papers recounted “To the great horror of Mr John Smauker, Sam Weller began to whistle. ‘I beg your pardon Mr Weller’ said Mr John Smauker, agonised at the exceedingly ungenteel sound.”

Indeed, the stereotype I have in mind is of a cheery butcher’s boy or newspaper boy out on delivery, and of more genteel boys being warned not to lower their standards to such levels.


And those piercing whistles with the aid of fingers in the mouth? I used to have a friend who could split stones at a dozen paces with one of those.

And those wolf whistles – now generally frowned upon – aimed by workmen at a cutie walking by. Said cutie was supposed to smile, perhaps wave, or she’d be subject to rather less complimentary comments.


Whistling is actually a traditional language in La Gomera, one of the smaller Canary Islands, so much so that it is studied in schools to keep the language alive.


Did soldiers whistle? John Keegan Casey (1846 – 70) appears to think so in The Rising of the Moon commemorating the 1798 Irish uprising.

One more word for signal token, whistle up the marching tune
With your pike upon your shoulder at the rising of the moon.

Colonel Bogey and When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again also suggest a tradition when soldiers might have whistled a marching tune if unsure of the words.


Whistling has a long history in music hall and vaudeville. Here in Jersey a lady called Doreen Le Maistre did a ‘Whistle and Saw’ act during the Occupation. Ronnie Ronalde was a rather more famous star with yodelling and bird imitation among his other talents.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) gave us Whistle While You Work which went on to epitomise the British war effort a few years later.


There are many examples in popular music. Perhaps Otis Redding’s Sitting on the Dock of the Bay has one of the more memorable whistling passages.

But to conclude I give you Whistling Jack Smith aka Billy Moeller aka actor Coby Wells who was a Jersey resident for a while in the late 1970s and who was no mean cricketer who I played against on several occasions. He was the public face of the hit I was Kaiser Bill’s Batman – here is Billy.

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The Internet may contain traces of nuts

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized, Writing

≈ 32 Comments

‘Where do you all come from?’ – Mott The Hoople

One of WordPress’s most interesting stats is ‘hits by country’. In an idle moment I checked out my hits for the last year. In percentage terms here they are –

United States          23.8
United Kingdom      19.6
Jersey                     19.3
Ireland                     17.6
Canada                     6.1
Australia                   3.2
France                      1.2
New Zealand            1.2

Brazil                        0.8
Germany                  0.7
Guernsey                 0.7
Other                        5.8

unc.ed

unc.ed

In some instances surprising. The US is a big-ass country (as Britt would say) but I wonder if it has a higher percentage of bloggers. A lot of hits from my home island but I have no idea who they might be from as they are happy to lurk, which is fine. UK and Ireland I’d expect to be up there.

But hello out there in Brazil and Germany – and especially in Guernsey, our neighbours Who Time Forgot 😉

Any surprising numbers from fellow bloggers out there?

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26 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Some blogs just gotta be reblogged.

LifeRevelation

http://newvision2012.weebly.com/-10-countries-with-female-soldiers.html

I am traveling today. Which means I was up way before the sun, shaved, showered, downed some quick breakfast, loved on the Gang of 5, kissed Susie goodbye, checked seventy three times to insure I had my passport, drove an hour to the airport, finally convinced myself to pay the extra money to park in the garage, noticed after the nearly three mile trek to check-in that I had once again packed way too much crap, and after taking off various clothing while thinking how absolutely barbaric the whole security thing is, finally made it to my gate with exactly two hours and three minutes before my flight departs.

Now what to do?

One of my favorite pass-times is to watch people and the airport is one of the very best places to do it. This morning I got to gawk at everyone from a twenty something guy wearing a pair…

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Barry against the world

17 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized, Writing

≈ 10 Comments

I feel like I’ve finally joined the ranks of ‘proper’ indie authors. My 2010 running novel Barry has made its bow onto the  (very crowded) worldwide  stage. Last night it appeared on Amazon Kindle and it is now available to purchase and download.

I took the easy peasy route. First of all I didn’t have direct access to the final text  file. I was therefore unable to go the self-conversion road and battle my way through the process of uploading a clean mobi file. In any case have read too many stories about the difficulties involved (though I believe these are becoming fewer day by day). I’ve little patience with technical matters anyway.

So I did what I’ve always done when faced with a task out of my comfort zone – I paid a little man to do it. And for £125, though expensive enough, I had a perfect and painless mobi file and even I managed to complete the KDP publication process from there.

Midsummer and Tess ought to follow shortly but for now, if you fancy an entertaining read, based around running but moving into areas that surprised even me, go to the Barry – The Novel tab above.

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Wander Down the Ancient Hallway

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Taking the steps only one at a time
Follow the sound of my heartbeat now
I’m in the room at the top you’re at the end of the line

Meat Loaf/Jim Steinbeck
Pic attribution – Nomad Thru Life..Catching Up Slowly (Flickr)

Wander down the ancient hallway

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10 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Dianne Gray author

‘Smiley’ Barrow and the children

I know this street. I know these people. My grandmother used to live around the corner from them when she was a kid.

The man’s name is Clyde (Smiley) Barrow. His son (Clyde junior) was in my grandmother’s class at school. The girl was an orphan, adopted by the family twelve months before this photo was taken. Her name was Bonnie and both her parents (the Parkers) died in tragic circumstances.

This photo was taken the day of Smiley’s wife’s funeral. Her name was Nelly and my grandmother told me she was a boisterous woman. She worked as a cleaner and part-time seamstress. She and the kids were always beautifully dressed.

Grandmother said Nelly had died after falling from the second floor window of the family apartment. Apparently she was cleaning the curtains. No one believed it was an accident. They thought she had been…

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06 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Dianne Gray author

I’ve written about dreams before and how they can inspire stories (and even blog posts)! But I’ve had two dreams (I’m only going to post one here) that didn’t come to me when I was asleep – they came to me when I was on death’s door.

Warning – it you’re squeamish about blood, please don’t read any further.

When I was in my early twenties I suffered a miscarriage. I was almost 7 months pregnant and spent several days in the hospital. When it was all over I went home to recover. I remember my mother feeding me fish and beans because ‘that’s what makes you better’. But I didn’t get better. For about a week I was lethargic, depressed and in pain. At the end of that week I had a bad fever and found it hard to get out of bed. My hubby called the doctor who came over to see…

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01 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Roy McCarthy in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

The Survival Tree

Nitty Gritty Dirt Man

September 8th was Joe’s birthday, and we headed into NYC to celebrate.  We did the same thing eleven years ago, and on that particular day, the air had the first hints of autumn crispness. We commented all day how especially blue the sky appeared, and how clearly we could see all of the buildings.

Three days later, the world changed – and now, September 11 is a day that still haunts me.  Like so many other people, I have clear memories of where I was and what I was doing — as clear as the sky that day.  I remember conversations that I had and every single emotion of every single second.

Eleven years ago, I was working in a middle school – and while I do not want to go into all of my details that day, there is one moment that I cannot forget.

As the tragedy…

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