Children of Latharna
"Three wee stories to warm the cockles of your heart"
"Lyrical and nostalgic, wistful and humorous."
Author, Ian Andrew
Author, Ian Andrew
 I was sick, sore and tired of the games that Harry and Gary played. I was sick, sore and tired of BMXing, I was sick, sore and tired of the A-Team, I was sick, sore and tired of the band stick and I was sick, sore and tired of football.
‘I’m bored.’ I said to my mammy. ‘How could you be bored? It’s summer. You’re off school. The street’s full of weans. Away out and play like the rest of them.’ ‘They only want to play on bikes and all. I’m bored of bikes and all.’ ‘Jenny’s on her own over there. Away and play with Jenny.’ My mammy’s eyebrows were curved like question marks and she had a semicolon smile. She knew that I was not sick, sore and tired of Gary’s sister, Jenny. Jenny goes to the Andrews’ school of dancing at the Town Hall. Each Saturday, I’m there alone on the boy’s side of the hall. Jenny is there on the other side surrounded by thirty girls. It’s wile hard to be alone at dancing without stories birling through my mind. I do the three-hand reel with the girls. There’s a jellyfish of a girl on my left with arms and legs that wriggle in all the wrong directions. There’s a swan of a girl on my right with strong arms and graceful legs. The swan girl is Jenny. ‘Well, what are ye going to do?’ my mammy asked. ‘I dinnae know,’ I replied. ‘Ye dinnae know?’ she said. ‘What about a game that you like?’ ‘Harry and Gary won’t like my games.’ ‘How do you know they won’t like your games?’ ‘I just know.’ ‘Well, this might be your last summer with them, so you should try to play together.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Nothing.’
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"I imagined lifting the Chaine Memorial tower and writing a story just for Jenny." This beautifully illustrated keepsake includes: The Bully up the Brae The Band Stick The Children of Latharna A glossary of Ulster Scots, Scots & Gaelic terms An educational guide to help with context
To place an order for your family, your school or youth group, please send me an email.  "It’s a wile nice feeling standing near the bonfire on the Old Glenarm Road. The flames tingle your face and tickle your heart." A sample of The Band stick story, the second story in The Children of Latharna book, can be found below. This beautifully illustrated keepsake will include three stories, a glossary and an educational guide. Please order by emailing [email protected]. Illustrations, curtesy of Louis Humphrey, are copyright protected.  Image Copyright protected I live at number one Greenland Grove and wee Harry lives at number three. Harry is the best in the world at everything. He’s the best at BMXing, the best at kerbsy, the best at British Bulldog, the best at football and the best at up-against-the-wall-tennis. He’s the best at pots and pans drumming, the best at marching, the best at playing the dummy flute and the best at tossing the red, white and blue band stick. Harry has asthma, but he’s still the best at everything. Last year, Harry’s band stick turned in the air five times. It wheeled and it whirled and it cut through the white woolly clouds like a shear, and all the children in Greenland Grove watched with tilted heads and bleating hearts. I was sitting in Harry’s driveway footering with my red, white and blue duct tape when Harry said to me, ‘Gary, I’m going to enter the band stick competition and this year, I’m going to turn it six times.’ Six times, I thought. You havenae a hope, I thought. I said nothing and I concentrated on my band stick. My band stick is made from my mammy’s kitchen brush. Harry had to use an old yard brush. He hoked in the shed for an hour for it. Last year, there was a carfuffle over a missing kitchen brush. We both got a good clip in the ear for that. Harry is my best friend. They call us Harry and Gary, but we like to be known as the A-Team, the crack commando band stick unit of Greenland Grove, soldiers of fortune of the red, white and blue. Except on a Saturday, when Harry wears his green and white Celtic shirt. Harry doesnae have a union jack flag hanging from his upstairs window. I felt right and sorry for Harry, so last week, I planted two wee plastic union jacks flags in his mammy’s plant pots. Harry was wile happy about the flags. His mammy must have been wile happy too for she cackled and laughed about them with my mammy for an hour. Harry’s daddy was checking under the car later that day. He shouted, ‘Thanks for the wee flags, Gary.’ He’d no need to be checking his car, because Harry and I have the entire street covered by eight in the morning. Last summer, we invented a machine to check under cars for suspect devices. We took my mammy’s bathroom mirror and attached it to Harry’s mammy’s Ewbank sweeper. Harry’s mammy wasnae too happy about us taking her Ewbank sweeper. We got a clip in the ear for that too.  Image Copyright protected When you make a band stick, it’s important to have the right wood. You need to pay particular attention to its thrust, drag and lift. A heavy band stick can turn like a tornado, but you’ll get a quare ould gunk if a yard stick lands on your heid! A light kitchen shaft is ideal. It can soar like a bird and whistle like the wind. A quintuple-spinning-top-flight band stick needs crack commando planning. Two tennis balls are secured at each end. The secret is to bind the ball piercings with a bicycle puncture repair kit. The next step is the winding of the red, white and blue duct tape. Sometimes, I tremble as I wrap the tape around the stick, for it’s hard to breathe knowing that you’re creating the best band stick in the whole wide world. A slight shoogle can make a bubble in the tape.  Image Copyright protected I didnae tell Harry, but my wee sister has a wile steady hand, and when Harry was at Saturday night mass, she helped me wind my tape. There are a wheen of key moves with the band stick. First, there is the figure eight. You lift your left leg, feed the stick through with your right hand and catch it with your left. You bring the left hand over the head and pass the stick back to the right. It can be a dangerous move. If you walk away without an injury, you’re probably a girl. Then there’s the two-finger finger twirl. This is hard to do with a yard stick. You twirl the band stick between your index finger and your middle finger. You hold out the stick with a straight arm and you twirl it continually for at least a minute. If you stop after two twirls, you’re probably a girl. The third key move is the toss. You need a strong forearm and good hand-eye coordination, and if the sun’s cutting the clouds, a pair of sunglasses. The aim is that the stick should twirl in the air at least three times. If your stick touches the sun, you’re good enough to enter the band stick competition. If your stick twirls five times, you are the winner of the band stick competition. If your stick only twirls once and reaches the roof of your house, you’re probably a girl. Harry came home from mass last Saturday night and he said, ‘It’s no fair!’ I’d had an hour extra to practice that night, but Harry had nothing to complain about. He gets to stay up past nine. I can hear him outside when I’m in bed. I can hear his band stick whiz through the air and it’s like someone is plunging a bicycle pump into my heart, pumping it hard and then sealing it with my puncture repair kit so that I can no longer breathe.  Image Copyright protected And so, I lie in bed with the bright sun seeping through the crack at the side of the Venetian blinds, and I dream of being there on the street with Harry, whistling the choruses to the tunes and watching our sticks curl and dip and twirl and nip at the clouds. We only know one line to one Orange tune. It’s called The Sash. ‘It is old but it is beautiful, and its colours they are fine.’ Most of the time, we march to tunes from the Wednesday night Mission Hall instead. Deep and Wide is a good yin for the figure eight. You capture the stick between the legs on ‘deep’, swing it behind the back on ‘wide’ and call ‘Hallelujah’ as it soars through the air. Harry likes the wee Mission Hall. You earn a sweet for learning your bible verse and every once in awhile Mr Campbell throws a sweet into the middle of the room with a celestial smile on his face. My sister has butter fingers at kerbsy, but when it comes to sweets, she has hands like treacle. My mammy said that she’s a wee skitter and that if sugar were a passport to heaven, she’d fly through the pearly gates. My sister doesnae like eating dinners, so she doesnae. I keep telling her that if you slather HP sauce on your dinner, it takes the taste of food away, but she doesnae like HP sauce either. She said it smells too much like food. On the last day of school, I learned my sister’s secret. Wee Harry was playing in our back garden. We had been busy scrubbing the spokes of our bikes with Brillo pads when my mammy called me in for dinner. We get our dinner at five o’clock. Harry gets his at six when his daddy comes home from work. Here’s a strange thing about Harry: he likes food! He even likes food without HP sauce! So, there he was sitting beneath my mammy’s kitchen window on a sunny night in June with purple brillo bubbles all over his hands when he heard a fissle. He told me that he was praying to win the band stick competition when suddenly a sausage wrapped in kitchen roll came tumbling down from heaven, a piping hot sausage that was clarried in Heinz tomato sauce. He thanked the Good Lord for his offering when another fissle alerted him to a second delivery from on high. A spud happed in kitchen roll appeared in his lap. God had truly delivered. Harry ate my sister’s dinner at five o’clock and then dandered next door to eat his own at six.  Image Copyright protected Harry’s maybe the best eater in the world too. There’s a boy on our street called Billy. He doesnae follow the bands and he doesnae like bikes. He goes to Donegal every year on holiday. Donegal is a place down south, but I looked it up on a map and it’s in the north of down south, right beside the city of Londonderry, which Harry and Billy call Derry. I asked Billy about Donegal and it doesnae sound anything like Portrush. There’s no ghost train, laughing clown or Big Dipper. I dinnae understand why anyone would go on holiday to a place with no Big Dipper, especially when you’re in P7. Billy’s mammy pays £5 an hour for flute lessons with a lady from Ballygally. Ballygally is like Larne, but it’s no as big. It’s got a beach, a castle and a giant cliff called Ballygally Heid. Ballygally Heid has eyes and a nose and everything. I towl Billy that it’s free to learn the flute in the Chaine Memorial Flute Band in Larne and you get to walk in the parade on the Twelfth day of July. Billy said his mammy said, ‘We’ll think about it.’ Harry’s in the Chain Memorial Flute band, but he doesnae walk on the Twelfth. He stays on the street to man the driveways with the Ewbank sweeper. The first two weeks of July were right and busy. I called in for Harry at half seven every morning to build the ramps on the street for the BMXs. Greenland Grove is a cul-de-sac that was designed to a high specification. The wide area at the bottom is a BMX bike course until the daddies and mammies who have cars come home from work. The narrow part of our street is designed for kerbsy. Kerbsy involves bouncing a ball off the opposite kerb.  Image Copyright protected The wider part of the street is also for British Bulldog. It’s a game in which two teams hold hands. A team member is sent forward to break through the barricade on the other side. British Bulldog is wile annoying when you have to hold hands with a girl. Then there’s rounders. It’s a bit like cricket, but somebody always makes up a new rule and then everybody falls out. The only flaw in the design of Greenland Grove is the abundance of flowers in front gardens. The adults dinnae like balls in their gardens, so they dinnae. I want to be a street designer for children when I grow up. I’ll ban flowers and make all the windows bullet proof for kerbsy. After BMXing, Harry and I work on our band sticks in the wide part of the street, while the girls do handstands and Irish dancing. Irish dancing is mostly for girls, except for wee Billy with the £5 flute lessons. He goes to the Andrews’ School of Dancing at the Town Hall with my sister. She says that he sits at one side of the hall with his legs dangling off the seat, and all the girls sit at the other side. It must be wile hard for Billy being alone at the dancing and the fluting. I go down to the wee park after lunchtime to help collect for the bonfire. Harry stays with Billy and tries to teach him how to be a crack commando band stick master, but Billy has butter hands like my sister and he’s lacking a bit in gumption. On the Eleventh night, I’m allowed to stay up until after midnight because of the bonfire, but Harry gets called in at half past ten. It’s a wile nice feeling standing near the bonfire on the Old Glenarm Road. The flames tingle your face and tickle your heart. The bonfire has got something to do with King Billy, who once won a big battle on a River called Boyne against King Jimmy. The Boyne River is situated in the Down South that’s not in Donegal. When we play King Billy in Greenland Grove, we let Billy be Billy and Harry be Jimmy. The Boyne River is marked out in chalk across the narrow part of the street. The aim is to ride the BMX up a ramp and over the river. The problem is that King Billy always falls off his bike and loses the battle. One day Billy asked if he could Irish dance over the Boyne. Says I to Harry, ‘What do ye think, Harry?’ Says Harry to me, ‘It’s no fair that Billy always loses the Battle of the Boyne.’ Says I to Billy, ‘Aye, alright then. Ye can Irish dance over the River Boyne.’ I was feeling tense. I wanted Billy to win. Not just the Billy from the battle, but I wanted Billy to win something because he was the worst at everything. I watched. Billy tucked his hands into fists by the sides of his body. He did a few one-two-threes on approach to the line. Before King Jimmy had even got onto his horse, King Billy’s legs flipped up over his head and he galloped across the river in one stride. Billy landed on the other side of the Boyne with a wide smile.  Image Copyright protected My mammy laughed about King Billy when I told her about it later. Said she to my daddy, ‘Did ye ever hear anything like it in your life? I knew that something was wrong on the Twelfth of July. I got dressed as fast as I could into my stripy red, white and blue T-shirt and slipped downstairs. ‘The poor wee craiter,’ said my mammy to my daddy. ‘And there he was meant to be tossing the band stick this morning.’ I stepped outside the front door and looked up the street. There was the blattering of my heart against my chest and the right and quiet sound of the wind. A wee flag in Harry’s garden was on its side on the grass and the big flag on my wall was flapping against the pebble dash. Harry’s curtain was closed. I heard my mammy’s voice again in the hall. She was calling me. ‘It’s wee Harry,’ she said with long eyes. ‘He’s in hospital. He had an asthma attack in the night.’ I couldnae hear the words she was saying because of the blattering of my heart in my ears. I went back outside and sat on the step. I walked to Harry’s house and lifted the wee flag from the garden. I took the other out of the flower pot, wound them up and held them tight to my chest. Harry’s house was empty. I walked around the back. The bikes were still lying on the grass. I opened the shed door and put them away so that Harry’s shiny spokes wouldnae rust. I didnae know what to do after that. My mammy came outside and said we’d just go to the wee feeder parade at the Fectory in case there was any news. Said she, ‘Och, it’s a wile shame. Harry liked the wee parade at the Factory.’ Harry did like the wee parade at the Fectory. After the feeder parade at the Fectory, my mammy sat on the coal bunker outside the house. ‘Let me see ye with the band stick,’ she said. I nodded as my heart blattered in my throat. I walked to the shed and lifted Harry’s band stick. I twirled it around with my fingers and looked up to the sky. Said I to mammy, ‘God’ll take care of wee Harry, won’t he?’ Said she to me, ‘Aye. God will take care of wee Harry. He’ll be home soon.’ I gripped Harry’s band stick with my right hand and looked through the sun to heaven. With one stroke, the band stick swept up into the sky. I shielded my eyes with my hand and I asked God to take care of wee Harry. The sticked twirled. Once. Twice. Three times. The stick was twisting into a blur of red, white and blue circles before the sun made me blind and the sky turned white. ‘Six times,’ my mammy said, as she stood up from the coal bunker. I held out my hands and waited for the stick to fall. It fell through my open arms as my hands melted like margarine. I lifted it from the grass and I cradled it against my chest. Six times, I thought. There’s hope, I thought.  Image Copyright protected That night, Harry came home. He was sitting up in bed when his mammy let me into his room. I reached my band stick over to him.
‘This is for you,’ I said. ‘But this is yours,’ he said. ‘But you can have it,’ I said. I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed awake to check that wee Harry was breathing. I tapped the wall with Harry’s band stick and Harry tapped the wall with mine, and I knew that wee Harry was the best at beating the asthma in the whole wide world. Order this keepsake today by emailing [email protected] Angeline King is the author of: Irish Dancing: The festival story A history of dancing in Ulster with a focus on the festival tradition of Irish Dancing. Suitable age: This is a history book, recommended for secondary school pupils and adults. Click here to start reading Snugville Street "An enjoyable coming-of-age tale with a Belfast twist" (The Irish Times) Suitable age: This novel is to be enjoyed by adults. Click here to start reading A Belfast Tale “Uniquely, authentically and enjoyably Belfast" (Tony Macaulay, author of Paperboy.) Suitable age: This novel is to be enjoyed by adults. Click here to start reading Children of Latharna Lyrical and nostalgic; wistful and humorous, Ian Andrew, author. Suitable age: Like The Piper of Black Cave, these stories can be enjoyed by "big weans and wee weans." Click here to start reading. |