As a child, what I saw and what I read didn’t seem to match up.

Loving your neighbour, seemed pretty central to what was being taught – yet even as a kid I could see that the adults had moved on from that. It had become problematic.

The thing that really confused me was that I thought that the term Protestant referred to people who went to a Protestant church. Everyone I knew went to church. And knew better than to touch the demon drink. Of course I came to discover that there were Protestants who didn’t even seem to know the rules.

I’d never been near a catholic church so I didn’t know what sort of shenanigans went on in there. I was fairly sure that on stepping over the chapel threshold, warning lights would sirens would instantly be set off, with intricate detection systems instantly potatifying me into a small mound of Protestant champ. This fear was later proved to be true when I attended the funeral of my friend’s mum, and having been fooled into thinking that the congregation saying the Lord’s prayer meant we were all on the same team now, like a big eejit found myself on my tod uttering the last line.

Of course I pointed at the guy next to me, scowled a Catholic scowl and managed to avoid the potatification…

Ulster Speak

Potatification – the action of being turned into a potato. Not one a them waxy ones, but a good-eatin’ floury spud.

Eejit – an idiot