Cormac MacConnell: Confession of a non-PC man of colour
They had one of those lovely roundy caravans and two spring carts, and a canvas tent over hazel ribs, and we called them tinkers because the menfolk were tin-smiths of great skill, who sold items like lidded tin cans and porringers and buckets to the people of the parish.
After they moved away down their travelling road, the campsite glittered for a while with the tin snippings of their trade.
The men carried themselves with a certain pride back then, and their womenfolk selling the cans at the door wore brighter headscarves than any of our mothers or neighbours.
You never saw a bald tinker. Our wise oldsters said this was because the hard life on the road killed them in their 40s. That was probably true.
It is equally true that the arrival of the plastic bucket and basin on the retail scene wiped out the tin smiths, in just a few short years.
The roadside campsites did not glitter in the sunlight any more, and the women at the doors had nothing to sell. Their world and ours were changing fast.
Refer to any of the descendants of that clan as tinkers nowadays, and you could easily find yourself in court. And there again is the pure truth.
I will get to my point eventually through the back door, but first I recall that at about the same time, there was always great excitement in our homes when the mothers brought home a new pot of red jam.
This was because the label of the most popular jam in Ulster was adorned by the famous trademark of a smiling golliwog wearing a red waistcoat.
He was stuck on to the label, and was nearly as famous as the leprechaun. If you moved faster than your brothers and sisters you might be lucky enough to capture him, and stick him proudly on the cover of one of your schoolbooks.
The golliwog was exterminated by the jam company, in one of the first dramatic moves dictated by the beginning of this bizarre enough Politically Correct era in which, incredibly, for whatever reason, hacks like myself are prohibited from even mentioning one of the strongest primary colours of the world in which we try to survive.
I recall again that the first rhyme I learned in Rossdoney Primary School was Eeeny Meeny Miney Mo. We sang it when I was a Low Infant. Complete it in public nowadays, and you could finish the year in Mountjoy.
Or lose your job, like that bumbleoon, Jeremy Clarkson of the BBC.
The ubiquitous new phrase in this PC era is “person of colour”. That is longhand for the elimination of the certain strong primary colour I mentioned earlier.
It however does not fill the bill at all. It is not precise or descriptive enough for the likes of me.
For example, just glance at my distinguished countenance adorning this space, and you will have to agree with my assertion that, whilst predominantly white in colour nowadays, I am in fact a person of many colours.
When I was young, the hair and beard were of the same hue as the Ace of Spades, or the backside of a young rook flying North.
I was stranded in the Burren last November, on the harshest day of the winter, when the car broke down, and I had to walk four miles home through the gales and the sleet. By the time I reached home, I was a person of the colour blue, and the end of my long nose was actually purple.
My frozen toes were snow white and, yes, my mood was of that banned colour.
We will hopefully have a good hot summer. During its peak, I would hope that I will become a man of the colour brown, like often before in June and July. Any time in the past that I put my foot in it socially, or was embarrassed, I was certainly a person of the colour scarlet.
I went out with Aran fishermen many years ago, in a half-decker equipped with a harpoon gun for basking shark hunting. The seas out past Aran began heaving heavily that evening, and I became a man of the colour green.
It happened again more recently, on a ferry to the remote Greek island of Paxos, and on steeply plunging escalators serving the Metro in Budapest.
Moreover, though predominantly white, it is also true that my late mother was a Bannon clan member. They were defined from other Bannons by the genetic fact they had short, yellow necks.
I have inherited one of those. Again, the purest of truths.
Finally, a strong Roscommon farmer who saw me in a pub years ago, after I had reported on his drunk driving case for the local paper, reacted by equipping me with two eyes of the colour which we dare not mention.
A week later, they became an interesting shade of green, too.
My fundamental point, in conclusion, is that the PC phrase, “man of colour” is a linguistic failure.
