In Northern Ireland in the 1980s I used to get a ride to school with a man who was a Major in the British Army and thus a prime target of the IRA. The way the IRA would kill such men was to sneak a mercury tilt switch bomb under their car at night. The bomb’s clever mercury tilt switch could sit untroubled under the car for weeks but as soon as the car was driven it would eventually hit a slope, the mercury would slide down the vial and complete the contact, a charge would be sent to detonator which would detonate enough plastic explosive (usually Semtex) to kill everyone in the vehicle. This man’s son was a year above me in school and he told my parents it was no trouble for him to take me and my little brother to school rather than us taking the train and bus. He of course knew that because he was a potential IRA target and he had to check under his car every morning without fail to see if someone had put a bomb under it the night before.
While we boys waited inside the house, the Major got down on his knees with a flashlight and checked under his car religiously. Every morning.
Except…
When he didn’t.
When it was snowing or raining heavily I guess he didn’t check at all.
I remember very clearly the first morning I noticed this. It was pouring with rain and I was staring out the living room window and I saw the Major go outside, finish his cigarette under the overhang and not check under his car. “Come on boys!” he yelled and we got up.
I’ve written about this moment before and put it, in different forms, in a couple of books, but since the moment involves Dolly Parton who we lost this week I thought I would mention it again here.
For generations, country music has held a special place in the hearts of people across Ireland, and nowhere was that connection more powerful than in Northern Ireland during the years of the Troubles. At a time when everyday life could be divided by politics, religion and violence, music offered something wonderfully uncomplicated: stories, emotion, humour and a shared sense of belonging.
For many people, country music arrived into their homes through the radio, and Downtown Radio became an important part of that experience. Launched in 1976, Downtown was broadcasting throughout the Troubles and became part of the everyday soundtrack of life in Ulster. Its country programmes were particularly popular, with some of them attracting the station’s highest audiences.
Everyone knew who Dolly Parton was. Dolly was the Queen of Country, second only to the Queen of England and certainly more popular than the Queen of England for half the population of Belfast.
On that particular rainy morning when the Major didn’t check under his car Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors was playing on the radio. I knew that for a mercury tilt switch bomb to work the mercury would have to go down the glass vial and hit the contact on the slope of a hill. Unfortunately right before our school there was a massive hill.
As Dolly sang about being bullied at school for her patched clothing I knew that on this hill I was going to die, and worse I was going to die surrounded by idiots. My idiot brother obliviously reading a comic book, the Major obliviously humming along to Dolly and his idiot son in the front seat glaring out the window like an eejit at the cows in the field next to the North Road. I was filled with existential panic and a kind of rage that I was going to die having never kissed a girl or fulfilled my destiny which was either to captain Liverpool FC or the Ireland Rugby Team (I hadn’t decided which).
The slope of the hill got steeper, life hung in the balance, my brother turned the page of the Beano…
Of course there was no bomb and we didn’t die and Dolly finished her bittersweet hymn to her hardscrabble youth without anyone else in the car getting remotely upset. But I was changed. Life is precious and to live at all is miracle enough. I told my mother that I wasn’t going to ride with the Major anymore and I told my idiot brother he shouldn’t do it either. He kept doing it and of course there never was a bomb. But on the boring, long bus and train to school I began to write down little stories and make comic books and maybe I wouldn’t have done that in the car…
Years later I wrote the existential crisis into one of my Sean Duffy detective novels when Sean, for once, forgets to look under his Beemer for a bomb. I wanted to have Coat of Many Colors playing on the radio as Sean goes into a panic so I wrote to Dolly Parton’s record company to ask permission. The note was forwarded to her manager Don Warden who emailed me to ask what kind of book it was. I unpacked the novel and the above story for him and assured him that I would never associate Dolly’s good name with anything that wasn’t my very best work. He emailed me back to say that the final say on the permission would have to come from Dolly herself. Two weeks later the permission was granted.
I never met Dolly Parton but I know for a fact that for a few seconds or maybe a minute or two she got to hear the above story and I hope she had a wee chuckle about it.
RIP Queen.
I learned about mercury tilt switch bombs, along with several others, as part of my counter-terrorism training in the military. I used it in one of my earliest novels, and used several of the others in later novels. I think my learning experience was easier--and safer--than yours.
I read this episode from you a couple of times and immediately thought of it when I heard about Dolly’s passing, but up to now I did not know about the part of mentioning the song requiring Dolly’s approval. How lucky we are that this experience made you ride the bus and start to write stories!