Integration

FWIW and it doesn’t mean much to me but I do want to put it out there when the runny stuff hits the fan I don’t want there to be room for excuses.

I did ‘integrate’ I was on a course for almost a year shopping getting to know some of the locals a little and enjoying a nice little town.

I did look for work but in Ireland at that time it was worse than trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack and I felt guilty what was someone of my age and in my circumstances doing trying to get a job someone else, someone younger with family needed more.

What I didn’t and won’t do is go to church I dislike the Catholic Church I happen to be quite probably the only one in Ireland to be thrown out of the local church for being noisy. I was nine years old it was in London and I was not alone, one Sunday evening a whole gang of us decided to go to church. The priest was unimpressed.

I can see that becoming part of the community of church goers would have been useful but I don’t like dishonesty and I wasn’t keen on getting to know the local priest, when my uncle died I left two messages for the priest he didn’t return my call but at the funeral he asked if I was the one who had called.

A small thing maybe but it pissed me off it still does. A relative I was very fond of had died and I wanted to make sure that the church he had attended almost all his years in Ireland was organised and the priest didn’t return the calls.

Don’t dare talk to me about integrating I speak to some people regularly they may think I’m a bit eccentric but if there’s any honesty in them they won’t think I’m rude or nasty. I just don’t go to church and since I don’t drive travel to and from town is not something I do every day.

I won’t allow gossipy excuses like that to grow into any kind of so called explanation