The Troubles

"Do you know how to play Knuckles?" asked the young Englishman one evening after dinner in our student accommodation. It was the November of my first term at University and I so wanted to succeed. I was going through one of those phases wherein I believed that there was very little I didn't know, and so I was perhaps not best placed to identify the lessons which Life is inclined to lavish upon the unsuspecting eighteen-year-old.

It seemed strange that an Englishman should have made his way to Ireland to study English but then this is quite a strange part of the world even at the best of times and this was hardly the best of times. The year was 1973 and, like so many of my compatriots, I was probably still reeling from the terrible events which had begun to consume the society into which I was born and struggled to grow up.

He spoke eloquently, as most students of English seemed to, and exuded that noxious air of superiority which practically defines the true Brit. I, being a student of Mathematics and more importantly an Irish Catholic on my home patch, knew that neither words nor airs equated to substance. What I might lack in eloquence or worldliness would surely be more than offset by the substance of the man I hoped I might already be.

`Knuckles' is the name given to that contact sport in which each participant attempts to strike the back of the hands of his opponent repeatedly until he misses, whereupon strike passes to his opponent and so on. Simple enough by way of rules and regulations the game is played without a referee and even in these days of synchronised swimming, 'Knuckles' is unlikely to become an Olympic sport.

Not being one to avoid a challenge (that was to come later) I felt obliged to put manners into this toffee-nosed son of the Empire. True, it would be scant recompense for the centuries of tyranny which his forefathers had inflicted on my ancestors, but no one could say that I wasn't prepared to do my bit.

Presently, we began. The Englishman assured me that his reflexes would be much quicker than mine but I chose to see this as no more than a feeble attempt on his part to gain the psychological advantage.
At first, he caught me with a few lucky shots and the backs of my hands smarted with the sting of each rap. He swiftly caught me with a few more lucky shots and I soon began to feel pain. In fact he caught me with so many lucky shots that I went beyond mere feelings of physical pain and was soon catapulted into the realms of torture. With each blow to the back of my hands I prayed that sooner or (even) later I might have an opportunity to rip his arm right out of his shoulder. Alas, it was not to be. Once or twice he did actually miss but by this time my hands were so swollen and painful that I was unable to gain any advantage. Each time I missed, my heart sank through the soles of my feet leaving me feeling overwhelmed in the knowledge that I had once again surrendered the initiative to my tormentor.

No matter how painful the blows which rained on the backs of my knuckles, I was incapable of saying "Enough!". I held on (and on and on!!!) in the vain hope that one good shot would be all I needed to redress the balance. He would be so sorry when I eventually got even. In the event we carried on - tormentor and tormented - until at length he decided to stop because his hands were starting to hurt. (God in heaven, tell me it wasn't so !!!!) Had the heathen's hands not begun to hurt we still might have been there, but being the contemptible individual that he was (or at least that I perceived him to be), he wasn't prepared to put up with the physical pain of practically pulverising my knuckles.

We stopped. I retired to my room with swollen hands that now practically glowed in the dark and wept.

Once more, the Brit had raided our homeland to kick Irish arse, only this time it was my Irish arse.

Would 'the Troubles' ever end?

Frank