Bordering on the daft

READ UP ON BORDERS

I WASN’T sure I was going to make it this week with the column – I had to have a colonoscopy. No, nothing serious. I was just trying to get a visa for India, and they’re very thorough, you know.

OK, only joking. But India, in my experience at any rate, is one exceptionally strict country for border checks. Ditto Tunisia. I remember an immigration official saying to me that the majority of Westerners that arrived in Tunisia knew little about Arabic culture. Boy, I thought, does this guy ever need to get off his high camel.

But speaking of borders naturally brings us to our own one.

The Brexit talks have been going pretty well, but it still seems that the border is posing a few problems. So let’s all hope that commonsense prevails and we can have that seamless frontier.

But I have a confession to make. I like hard borders. In my travels I’ve always liked customs posts; I like to see border guards, different flags, checkpoints; I quite like being stopped and asked what my business is. There’s a frisson of excitement round any border.

My first encounter with the concept was the old Northern Ireland border — places like Killeen where you went through customs posts in both jurisdictions, gardaí security, RUC security (as it was back then) and probably a military checkpoint as well.

As a young lad, my Dad would take us on the odd day trip across the border. He needed what was then called an “international border triptych” — a three-cornered yoke that proclaimed his car to be fully insured, and himself fully qualified to drive on the roads in the Republic. Not long after one journey I happen to read about Michelangelo’s Triptych. You may imagine my momentary confusion.

But not quite as confused as one of my sisters, Catriona, after her first journey across the border aged around eight or so. The border crossing had been so lengthy and convoluted that she assumed that we’d been to America for the day. We’d only been to Omeath from Co. Down, but the officialdom on show, not to mention the military hardware, was enough to convince her we’d been to the USA. Her confusion has, of course, passed into family-lore.

But since those early days of frontier crossing, I’ve treasured borders. I loved the Iron Curtain — not the repression, of course, nor the inability to get a peacetime economy going, but the physical manifestation of it. In places like Bavaria you could emerge from a forest and huge red sighs would warn you Landesgrenze!! – border ahead. And there it was. About a quarter of a mile of scrubland leading to a huge fence. And on the other side Vopos, the Deutsche Volkspolizei or East German security, would look at you through binoculars, or even better down their rifle sights. You’d wave, and occasionally a bored Vopo would wave back.

I’m not saying I’d like any of that in Ireland, no indeed. Speaking as someone who often has to make the decision on whether to go for the messages in Newry or Dundalk, a troop of Vopos or the like stationed on the Fathom Road would be very inconvenient. And sometimes soft borders can be fun. I particularly like the one they have in Basel. The outskirts of the city nudge up against Germany and France. So you can walk from Switzerland, through Germany and into France in less that a mile. With precious few checks. But for any border fancier, the high spot has to be on the Canada-US border, between Quebec and Vermont. The Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the border between the towns of Rock Island and Derby Line — and the international line runs right through the library, being marked quite clearly in the rooms that straddle the border. There are no security checks.

NO VAL FOR MAL

WELL done all of you last year who saw through the whole commercialism of St Valentine’s Day and didn’t send me a card. So glad none of you were taken in by the whole dreadfully capitalistic business.

Well done there. I hope you can keep it up until Thursday (last posting day Tuesday to guarantee any card arriving on time).

Mind you, cards are one thing – but have you seen the cost of flowers this year? Fifty euro for a couple of roses and a few ribbons to wrap them in.

Even the oil companies are going, ‘Hey, that’s robbery. You can’t exploit people like that. Come on!’

Yes, St Valentine’s is one of those great calendar markers of the year that involve a slice of Christianity, some pagan traditions, the huge organ grinder of commercialism, and chocolate

You may already know that a strong Irish connection attaches to St Valentine’s Day – Dublin is the last resting place of the Saint of Love.

It may seem strange that the home of cheese ’n’ onion crisps, Guinness and Joe Duffy has become the world’s Capital of Romance, but the city’s association with Val and his gal make it Love City No 1.

The remains of St Valentine lie in Whitefriar Street Church on Aungier Street, a gift from Pope Gregory XVI to the respected Dublin Carmelite Father John Spratt for services rendered.

Details about St Val are hazy, but he was probably Bishop of Interamna in Italy, executed on February 14, 270 AD for secretly marrying young couples – and married men made for poor soldiers.

Legend has it, however, that while languishing in jail, he fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer, miraculously restoring her sight.

Before being beheaded he wrote a note to her ‘from your Valentine’. The world’s first Valentine’s card.

Little did he know that hundreds of years later he would be saviour of the greetings card industry – and indeed the legal profession.

Listen to this: a young woman in a Dublin post office spotted a middle-aged, balding man standing at the counter methodically placing ‘Love You’ on bright pink envelopes. He then took out a perfume bottle and carefully sprayed them with scent.

Curiosity finally getting the better of her, she asked what it was all about. ‘I’m sending out a thousand Valentine cards signed, ‘Guess who?’ he said

‘But why on earth?’ asked the woman. ‘I’m a divorce lawyer.’

A BIT OF A CARD

I’M addicted to the Twitter site Postcards from the Past.

It’s billed as ‘fragments of life in real messages on postcards’, and is as good as its word.

For instance a postcard from Bath announces: ‘Audrey next door is looking after Basil’ while one from Canvey Island simply states: ‘Not worth visiting’.

One from Lancaster proclaims ‘Thank you very much for sending the napkin ring for Orla’, while a lovely landscape postcard from Yorkshire carried the message: ‘We are on a mystery tour tomorrow. Hope it’s Southport.’

My favourite is from Truro and simply states: ‘It may not have been worthwhile bringing the accordion.’ One finds oneself asking, is it

ever?

RUBBISH PROJECTILE

YOU may have thought that the fastest object in the world is a rocket or the like. Probably not. It’s more than likely a manhole cover. It seems that in 1957, an underground nuclear weapons test was conducted near Los Alamos in the USA. The manhole cover was covering an air shaft right above the site. It had originally come from the local council’s sewage department.

When the nuclear bomb was detonated, the manhole cover was blasted into space.

A high-speed camera trained on the lid caught only one frame of it moving upward before it vanished – which means it was moving at a minimum of 66 km per second. That’s about 147,000 miles per hour. Six times faster than would be needed to escape Earth’s orbit.

The manhole cover was never found; it is possible it burned up on its trajectory; on the other hand it’s just as likely that the round piece of metal is silently and inexorably travelling steadily in deep space.

If so, I’d like to be on the planet that the manhole eventually reaches. It would be interesting to see local boffins on this far off distant land trying to work out what ‘Los Alamos Sewage Department’ means for the future of their planet.