Clough Says NO to Garlic
By Caitlín Small
“To hoom it may concern, my wee village Clough, says NO! No Paddys! No Muzlims! They threatin my community shure. Have te keep my wee village safe shure, all three hundrid of us. Just doing my jooty like.” — Recent conversation heard in Eurospar, Clough village.
I’m trapped in the tenth circle of hell, Northern Ireland. I wish Dante were here to see this; it would’ve given him some class inspiration. The tenth circle could be called fenianism er something.
People like to describe the North as an awkward teen, not really knowing where it belongs or what to be at. I, however, like to think of it more as the great-uncle you must give a kiss on the cheek to at the yearly Christmas dinner party. He’s getting older and stranger every year, and you know he doesn’t really like you, but he just won’t let you go once he puckers up. It’s horrible, really. Release me.
It’s almost as though this weird, little, social construction of a country exists in a storage box in the backrooms of some higher power’s admin building, titled “bigot-land”. The place clearly wasn’t intended to be an intellectual stronghold either. Bless whoever wrote the letter, honestly.
“We go to great lengths to protect its residents and our children.” That’s all well and good, very community watch of them. Mind you, though, the place doesn’t house more than 400 people max, unless there are secret Catholic and Muslim underground organisations?! Scratch that, I’m just kidding. Don’t want to be giving any strong-minded individuals from Clough any ideas nai.
It’s all well and good to joke about it, and I have. But real families have received this and have been targeted not for their crimes or so-called “anti-social” behaviour. Rather, for believing in a different version of the same God or wearing a top that just so happens to have the word “O’Neill’s” on it. Arbitrariness at its finest.
It’s not entirely false to say the North has grown since the Agreement, but it’s not entirely true, either. Many of us are desensitised to hatred; we have seen physical violence, verbal abuse, and witnessed or heard dehumanising stories from our parents’ days in the Troubles. However, that should not undermine the bigotry that still exists, no matter how “mundane”. Clough did not make the national news; many of these letters do not. They just land on the doormats of innocent families from small villages, instead. Doing their job in silence.
Poor Clough, whose tourism once lagged, but now, forever will be landmarked as the place where paranoia got planning permission.
