A gallery of tributes

Sometimes life hits you with reality and you’re floored. In life Denis Collins delighted in surprising you. His sudden death was no different. Doubtless Denis would smile this morning full in the knowledge that once more he caught so many people out with his sudden passing.

You’d be out on a litter pick as part of tidy towns and as everyone was heading for a cuppa, Denis would find another lane full of empty cans and bottles. You’d turn up at the arts centre to find there was an additional artist added to the bill at the last moment.

 And there were the stories. Once Denis was in the mid west of the US taking an internal flight on a small aircraft. As he boarded he noticed that he was one of the few passengers not carrying a rifle! “So” asks Denis to the pilot who was also the air steward and the flight engineer, “Is this kind of thing normal”? “Absolutely “ was the response. “They put the bullets in the hold in their luggage”!

Denis was a legend. He encouraged so many people into the arts. He wasn’t just the owner of a gallery,  he saw talent and wanted to nurture it. Be it music, painting, photography, sculpture, poetry, dance. You name it, Denis encouraged it.

Denis took over from the late Chris Culleton as Chairperson of Wexford Tidy Towns. Chris died young 18 months ago. Now  Denis’s sudden death follows soon after. Denis embraced life in all its diversity; the arts, environment, politics and culture. With Denis where one stopped and the other started is anyone’s guess.

The Wexford Denis grew up in was fundamentally a different place to what  it is now. He opposed the 8^th Amendment in 1983 and supported Divorce in 1986. Two difficult things to stand up on back in the day. He understood the need for a broad political coalition between progressive politicians and straddled the divide between left wing parties that can often be bitter, petty and negative. There was so much that he stood above and stood aside from. That was why he was so loved and regarded.

I’ll miss his good humour, positivity, wisdom, intelligence and basic decency.  So I’ll finish with another story, Denis would have liked that.

A few years ago I entered Wexford Tidy Towns in a competition behind his back. Lo and behold on the night we were having a celebration for winning the Silver medal in the national competition, I learnt we’d won it. We were going to get free return tickets for up to 50 people on a train to anywhere in Ireland!

So over a few pints I revealed our good fortune to Denis.  Delighted we organised to visit Skerries the following Spring as Skerries had won the overall national competition. On the appointed day, Denis took us off on the morning train and after a change at Connolly there we were. As we arrived at the station one eagle eyed member of the group spotted a skip and curiously poked the debris to retrieve an Infant de Prague. Denis surveyed the scene and said to leave it for when we were returning.

As luck would have it on returning the statue was still there and tucked under the forelock of the volunteer was Wexford bound. As we had an hour to spare waiting for the connection to Wexford we made our way to the pub in Connolly Station. Just as we went in the door Denis turned to the volunteer who was still  carrying the statue. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t bring a child into the pub at this time of evening”.

Every town should have a Denis Collins

Rest well Denis in whichever secret garden you are now.  

Tales from the canvas 2019

“Of course I’ll vote for you” said the man who answered the door to me,  “But first my girlfriend has to have a shower”. “Come in”, he gestured; “I’ll show you the bathroom”

“I’m not so sure about all of this”, I said with the slightest hint of protest.  I must have been canvasing for over an hour that afternoon. We all know the score, never leave the door without a vote.

Up the stairs he marched me to show me the bathroom. Thankfully it was empty as he explained exactly what the problem was. His girlfriend is a local authority tenant. She’d hurt her back and raising her leg was bit awkward for her. She found the side of the bath difficult to manoeuvre when bathing, Her boyfriend was asking me to intervene with the council on her behalf so as to have a shower installed

When I eventually met her my heart sank. She is a pleasant cheery lady who’d just returned from working as a carer. Not the easiest of sells to a local authority engineer in the housing section of the council. Still there’s an election and small hope for the voter is better than no hope at all.

There’s been no election like this one. Local elections tend to be a referendum on the serving government. Five years ago the local election was played out against the backdrop of Phil Hogan’s decision to install water meters, Alan Shatters high handed attitude to Mick Wallace and James Reilly’s cancelling of medical cards to children suffering from cancer.

This one is very different. Few on the doorstep refer to the government. I suspect that many voters would fail to name half of the cabinet, such is the low profile ministers keep with the exception of the Taoiseach and Shane Ross. With Brexit hovering in the back ground many voters understand that normal political rules don’t apply. The novel approach to the likelihood of extra seats at European level is confusing depending on the outcome of Brexit. nobody can be certain.

But that is not to say there are issues. Control is key to politics. No candidate likes to be seen out of step. That’s why some candidates will develop a line of patter about what they believe the main issues are, Often the candidate can be wide of the mark. National issues can be repackaged with a local blás.

The major issue is the neglect of Wexford over the last 5 years and lack of representation. With the honourable exception of George Lawlor, many struggle to name local councillors in Wexford Town. Large parts of town have not seen either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael representatives since the last General Election.  All politics is local. Those voters are not too impressed that decisions taken by the council were taken by councillors they barely know and rarely meet.

Still, there’s 5 more weeks to polling day. Nobody has voted and we’re only starting out on the road. Maybe the lady I met on the hustings may yet get her shower?

Building connectedness in Wexford's School Communities

It doesn’t happen often, what’s rare is welcome. A day out of class but a day well worth it. Those were just some of the reactions to Monday’s unique conference for all 5 post primary schools in Wexford which dealt with self harm and suicide. A range of speakers educated and in some ways entertained their captive audience from 9 until almost 4 O’clock. It might surprise some to use the word entertained. It wasn’t just about dealing with mental health in pupils, it was about mental health and well being in the workplace. We all have a stake in that, parents, pupils and teacher. It was a day when parents like myself who teach became the pupil. This post is much longer than my normal posts are and may be too long to read.
Stick with and it may just give you an insight into what happened.

In the next few blog posts I will try to share the best of the contributions to make sure they get to a wider audience. What happened was valuable and worthwhile.  A lot of work went into yesterday by management in schools, HSE and Tusla which brought in agencies that deal with mental health in Wexford. A huge thanks to the principals and their staff who worked on it as well as the HSE.

It was good to see Wexford Marine Watch, It’s good to talk, Pieta House, Wexford Rape and Sexual Assault Centre, the HSE, FDYS among other groups there on stands interacting with teachers. I know a lot of the people involved, it was great to see them all under the one roof. Cllrs George Lawlor and Davy Hynes have a long track record on the issue of mental health in Wexford from different perspectives. Both were in attendance.  But it was an event where politics was put aside and focus was on welfare.

First up was Athol Henwick who works for the HSE in the South East. Athol is a South African and he dealt with the issue of self- harm and suicide. He spoke for 45 minutes unscripted. I’ll try my best at getting in today’s post what he said.

In essence he asked the audience what they considered to be self harm, would smoking, tattoos, drinking alcohol be self harm? If not what makes that different to cutting yourself? In his view it is all about intent. Why does a person set out to cut themselves? Athol gave us 3 different sub sets of people who self harm. One group was those who are determined to take their lives regardless. The other end of the spectrum are people who don’t want to take their lives but harm themselves for attention and can be recovered. And in the middle there’s the rest. And that’s the biggest group by far.

He set out a spectrum ranging from hair pulling to cutting oneself with small implements to slashing or taking poison. He set out how there are 8 fundamental characteristics to self harm, the 8 C’s as he called it. Here they are; the belief that self-harming helps cope with the problem, that it has a calming effect, that it comforts and gives control and for victims of abuse cleanses them of how dirty they feel. It may also confirms their existence and also can chastise the person for something they feel they may have done. But it also communicates to others that they are unhappy.

Athol then spoke about suicide and how he believes the level of self harm exceeds enormously the level of suicide. There are no accurate figures on self harm. There is no automatic from transition to suicide from self harm but many suicides have a history of previous self harm.  Just because a person self harms does not mean their behaviour will automatically lead further to a depression, mental illness or suicide. It may well but there is no certainty. The reality is that self harm is by its very nature secretive. Often the last people to find out are the parents. But it’s very likely that when parents find out there is already a significant difficulty.  But self harm is a symptom of unhappiness. Young people who suffer from it need to be equipped to cope with whatever makes them unhappy.

Athol turned to suicide and asked what were the causes.  He says there are 2 theories. The Joiner theory is that people feel worthless and that they conclude that everyone and everything would be better if they simply ended their lives.  Another theory suggests that the person who wishes to take their own life simply refuses to see the other person within them and simply decides to destroy what they see not appreciating that they are also killing everything else.

At the end Athol invited questions, So I put my hand up. I wanted to go back to the issue of self harm. I asked were there any particular one of the 8 C’s that we teachers need to focus on with young people. We teach children from 12 to 18. They’re fundamentally different types of people. Which of the C’s should we need to focus on? Is gender an issue in occurrence of self harm?

In response he said that young people feel an overwhelming sense of relief when they self harm. The possibility of infection doesn’t strike them. While self harm in girls may have initially had a higher occurrence, boys are catching up. 

There is a national registry of self harm for Ireland, here’s the link

https://www.nsrf.ie/our-research/our-systems/national-self-harm-registry-ireland/

I hope this post is of help, It’s a lot longer than my usual posts but I think what happened yesterday was useful. Next post will be on contribution by other speakers notably Bríd Carroll.