From Doing it My Way to Following His Way: A Memoir

By Granville Pillar

This evocative memoir sketches the dramatic first thirty-one years of baby boomer Granville Pillar. Afflicted from childhood with a debilitating speech disorder, he turns to a revolutionary therapy that synthesises with an unexpected new-found talent:

• Language: English
• Publisher: Granville Pillar
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9786150130729

Granville Pillar

Granville Pillar PhD has served for fifteen years with Global Scholars at universities and colleges in Hungary, Romania and, most recently, Ukraine, where he is associate professor of philology. In his early life, he was an electrician and band singer in Northern Ireland, club entertainer in England and southern Africa, electrical engineer in Germany, and language teacher and church minister in Australia. He enjoys singing, jogging and walking his dog, and is involved in church ministry through music and preaching. He is married to Ibolya, has two adult children and five grandchildren and lives in Hungary.

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PROLOGUE

Ask, seek and knock

At college we had mandatory Religious Instruction, with the Protestant and Catholic students attending their respective classes. This was one of the most stressful classes for me, because the essence of the lesson was the reading of the Bible, with each student having to read a verse from the section we were studying that day. There were no excuses for not reading.

The nervousness and sweating started as soon as I entered the classroom, because I knew the embarrassment that awaited me. The other students showed little sympathy for my predicament, and the sound of their sniggers and sighs of impatience as I struggled to get the words out did nothing to ease my stress.

Our Religious Instruction teacher had a simple method for teaching us significant passages from the Bible. He would choose a verse from the chapter we had read and give us three key words to help us learn it by heart. Of all the verses I had learnt, the only one that stuck in my mind into my adult life included the words ‘ask’, ‘seek’ and ‘knock’. The verse was: ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and the door will be open unto you.’

Why this verse was so firmly planted in my memory is a mystery. These lessons on religion were painful for me, so I had long forgotten what our teacher had taught us and had no desire to read the Bible or learn any more verses that were supposed to teach me about God. My view of the God of the Bible was far removed from the idea of God as a supreme being, creator of the universe and principal object of faith. For me, God was inexplicable, and I had no interest in pursuing an intangible entity that had no relevance in my life.

ONE

He’ll end up sweeping the streets

As far back as I can remember, my name, Granville, has been a subject of intrigue. It has been deemed by people whose paths I have crossed as unusual, uncommon, posh, complicated or foreign. One Frenchman insisted on calling me ‘large town’, which he said was the English translation of my name in French.

How on earth did I come to have the name Granville, a name more associated with the aristocracy of England than with a commoner born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland? Names of babies in the Irish and British cultures were usually drawn from family relatives, not from the aristocracy.

The truth is, it was not my parents who discovered the name Granville, it was Mum’s older sister, Helena (Lena). Soon after I was born, Lena read a headline on the front page of the local newspaper: Earl Granville, Governor of Northern Ireland, to visit Londonderry.

She said to Mum, ‘Beth, I think Granville would be a lovely name for the new baby.’

Mum agreed. And so is uncovered the mystery of how I came to bear such a regal English name of Norman French origin.

Mum was born in Londonderry, where she met Dad, who had moved there from Portadown to work in a tailor’s shop. They married towards the end of World War II and moved into a terrace house in Balmoral Avenue in Shantallow, an outer suburb of Londonderry. Born on 13 June 1948, I was the third of four sons born to Elizabeth (Beth) and Ivan Pillar.

The first memory I have of my childhood is of sitting on an old, ragged-edged, grey tarpaulin on the footpath outside our house in Balmoral Avenue playing with other children. I think I was about five years old. The tarpaulin was our pretend car; I was the driver, and the others were the passengers. In those days, back in the early 1950s, we were imaginative in creating simple ways to play. Toys were made, not just bought, and imaginations seemed to be limitless when it came to creating fun on the street and in the nearby fields.

One of my favourite pastimes was running beside an old tyre-less bicycle wheel and moving it along rolling a stick on the rim. We had many races to see who could run and wheel the fastest. I was not as fast as most of the others. As I grew older, I graduated to more sophisticated toys. There was the wooden trolley crafted out of old pieces of wood and a tea chest, with two wheels on the back and two smaller wheels on the front connected to a swivel crosspiece, to which two pieces of rope were attached for steering.

My brothers and I enjoyed many hours driving and pushing each other, and we suffered a few cuts and grazes along the way. In the winter, when it snowed, we commandeered a sleigh from our neighbour and spent many a cold but enjoyable afternoon taking turns riding it down our street.

Playing marbles (marlies) in the back lane and challenging each other to chestnuts (chessies) were memorable pastimes. I always lost in both games and often cried at my losses. Then there was the lure of the cowboys and Indians craze that had swept across the Western world – the cowboys were the goodies, and the Indians were the baddies.

We watched cowboy movies on Friday nights in the ‘wee hut’, the name we gave to the British Legion Hall in Collon Lane, not far from where we lived. This quaint, old hall played a significant part in our teenage years. Our cowboy heroes included John Wayne, Lash LaRue, Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Gene Autry, and, of course, Roy Rogers.

Everyone wanted to be a goodie like our heroes, so at Christmas, toy cap guns, holsters and cowboy outfits were high on our list for Santa. The rolls of caps were inserted into the magazine of the gun and made the sound of a bullet when we pulled the trigger. They also gave off a puff of smoke that oozed a sulphurous smell that made the whole charade even more realistic.

One of my prized possessions was a toy breech-loading rifle, which made a popping noise when fired. Many years later, I bought a similar gun for my son Robert, who loved it and kept it for many years. These cowboy antics in Balmoral Avenue stand out as one of the most enjoyable and memorable moments of my childhood.

In the early years, we were three brothers: me, Stanley (Stan) and Edmond (Eddie). There were only four years between us, so we did a lot of things together and helped each other at home and school. We were also quite competitive, so we did get into a few fisticuffs now and again.

Eddie was endowed with strength and fighting skills way beyond his years. He never shied away from an altercation with the boys from Tin Town, a nearby shantytown, who were our worst enemies, and he led us in many a battle against them in the field behind our street. No one dared mess with Eddie, and he looked after his ‘wee brothers’ when the need arose. He loved playing cowboys and was obsessed with guns and even made one of his own from metal pipe that shot ball bearings. For some obscure reason, he acquired the nickname of Nelly the Star. Guns continue to be his passion.

Our youngest brother, John, arrived on the scene when I was nine years old, so the age gap between him and us meant that he did not experience life as we three older boys had done. We enjoyed looking after our baby brother and liked to nurse him and take him out in the pram. We had all but left secondary school by the time John started primary school, so his childhood was quite different from ours, but no less fraught with challenging and sometimes stressful family dynamics.

We were encouraged to learn music and take up an instrument. Eddie learnt the piano and played the cornet in the Britannia Brass Band. Stan took singing lessons and in later years played guitar. I was not inclined to learning music or playing an instrument, but somehow in my teenage years, I began to amuse myself sitting at the living room table, a knife in each hand, beating a rhythm on a breadboard to accompany Eddie on the piano, who was banging out Russ Conway’s ‘Roulette’ or ‘Sidesaddle’. I graduated to a snare drum with brushes, and then to drumsticks and a kit of drums with cymbals. Little did I know then that my drums would one day become an instrument of healing, rather than just an instrument of accompaniment.

Stan had an excellent tenor voice. His singing teacher, Mrs Coleman, entered him in the annual Feis singing competitions and he always did well. He also sang in church, and I have vivid memories of him singing a favourite of Dad’s: ‘If I Can Help Somebody’. When I found my voice in my teenage years, we sang together, with Stan doing most of the high harmonies. The songs ‘Anna Marie’ by Jim Reeves and ‘Let It Be Me’ by The Everly Brothers were our party pieces and showed the obvious signs of what was to come.

Dad was a hard-working man and was well respected in the community. He was always well dressed and whisked out a comb from his inside pocket from time to time to ensure that his hair was in place – a trait that Stan and I inherited from him. Early in our growing-up years, he worked in a shoe shop, and then in sales for an electrical appliance shop. In those days, hire purchase, or HP as it was called, was the only way families could afford home appliances. Dad not only sold them, but he also had to go and collect the payments from his customers, who were scattered far and wide around north-west County Londonderry. As a teenager, I enjoyed going with him on his ‘journeys’ on Saturdays, which would take us to some of my favourite spots along the Lough Foyle coast. I have vivid memories of our trips to Downhill and Castlerock in his little green van and eating our packed sandwiches parked near the beach at Magilligan Point.

Dad enjoyed his Thursday nights with his long-time friends whom he knew from his younger days when he lived in Portadown. They would go to their local pub and enjoy a few bottles of Guinness. Sometimes they would make their way back to our house and continue to reminisce about the old days in Portadown and talk about their families. We always enjoyed listening to their stories, which were light-hearted and humorous.

On one occasion we were all sitting in our living room, and the conversation came round to talking about the Pillar boys.

Dad’s friend Jack Vaughan said, ‘So, Ivan, what about Granville? Do you think he’ll turn out all right?’

Tongue in cheek, Dad said, ‘The way he’s going, he’ll end up sweeping the streets.’

Jack responded, ‘I don’t think you need to worry about Granville, he’ll do all right, you’ll see.’

Like most fathers, Dad had his doubts about how we would fare in life, and I am grateful that he did live to witness the results of some of the changes in my life: changes that he or anyone who knew me then would never have envisaged.

Mum and Dad were strict, and a clip round the ear was not unusual punishment for stepping over the mark. Unlike today, this was an accepted form of disciplining boys and had its place in those days. At school, the discipline was sometimes more severe than at home, but corporal punishment in the classroom was accepted and tolerated by parents. Mum was a busy housewife and had her hands full bringing up her spirited boys. She meted out punishment when it was due; I think she had a heavier hand than Dad. She was house-proud and kept our home clean and tidy. If we walked through the front door, she would shout out that familiar command:

‘Will ye take those feet off.’

Reminding us to take our shoes off before coming into the house.

She enjoyed her regular chats with the other ladies from the street over a cup of tea. Our next-door neighbour, Mrs Buckley, came to visit most mornings and greeted Mum with her usual rhetorical remark:

‘Are yees livin’ or dead?’

I have vivid memories of Mrs Divine reading the tea leaves left in the bottom of the cups. We did not have tea bags then, and the tea was brewed or stewed using loose leaves, which were not strained when pouring the tea into the cup. The shapes of the tea leaves at the bottom of the empty cup were by all accounts unique to the drinker and could be interpreted to convey what would transpire in the future. Most of us did not believe in these ‘predictions’, but we enjoyed the fun and intrigue of it all.

Being a relation of returned World War II soldiers, Mum became chairperson of the local branch of the British Legion, a charity organisation that provided financial, social and emotional support to members and veterans of the British Armed Forces. She also organised jumble sales and led the way in bringing our street community together through arranging ‘bus runs’ (excursions) to Donegal and the annual Christmas parties, which were held in the Legion Hall.

Home life was a mix of fun, tension and strife, not unlike most other households around us. We all coped as best we could with the stress of regular fallouts and lingering bouts of silence between Mum and Dad, but this was tempered by the good, fun times we enjoyed together and with other family members and friends, particularly at Christmas, Halloween and Easter.

Balmoral Avenue comprised twenty-four double-storey terraced houses, and was the only street for about a mile in all directions. It was surrounded by fields, and the nearest building was the Christian Brothers School. The closest shop was about half a mile down Racecourse Road, which was the main road that went past our street. Further down this road was Messines Park housing estate, and then The Collon, a suburb of shops and houses.

The late 1950s heralded a massive influx of people with the expansion of Shantallow through the building of Belmont Estate, which engulfed Balmoral Avenue and transformed our lives in both good and in not so good ways: more cars, more buses, more shops, more friends, but nowhere to play football, nowhere to build our underground huts, no more potato picking and no more blackberry and gooseberry trees to pluck.

Prior to the building of this new housing development, Balmoral Avenue was a close-knit community, and its families enjoyed many outings and celebrations together. I still recall some of our neighbours’ family names: Lynch, McCrory, Gallagher, Buckley, Matchett, Bryson, Devine, Laird, McClay, Porter and Butler.

We were the first tenants in Balmoral Avenue to purchase our house from the landlord, who had built the houses just after the end of World War II. This gave Dad the freedom to redesign the inside of our smallish, two-bedroomed house. He added on a bigger kitchen and built a shed at the back of the house. He also converted the attic into a double bedroom, which we only used in the spring and summer months because it was too cold to sleep up there in the autumn and winter. He also knocked down the wall between the lounge and sitting room, which gave us a lot more space.

Dad’s ingenuity and tendency to go the extra mile for his employer paid financial dividends and allowed him to provide a living space for us that was more spacious, comfortable and practical than that of our neighbours. Dad lived up to his axiom: ‘If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well’. His work ethic rubbed off on me, for which I am grateful.

Thanks to Dad’s electrical appliances firm, we were the first in our street to own a television set. On FA Cup Final Day, our lounge was packed to capacity with neighbours who were eager to see the big match. Football was a big part of life in Northern Ireland, and every young budding footballer wanted to be a Stanley Matthews, a Bobby Charlton or a Georgie Best. I was and still am a Manchester United supporter. I was devastated by the Munich air crash in 1958 that killed many of the players, including the great Duncan Edwards, one of my heroes.

My football skills were honed in the field behind our house. We played at every opportunity and built up quite a respectable team. My ability as a footballer came to the fore in high school, where I was chosen to play for the school team. I was a left-footer (I kicked the ball with the left foot) and by then a fast runner, so I played outside left.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, before The Troubles, religion was not an issue, and we mixed and played with our Catholic friends. We followed Dad’s mantra of live and let live, but, for Protestant boys, it was taboo to go out with Catholic girls. The greatest shame for any Protestant parent was for their son to marry a Catholic girl and ‘turn’ to be a Catholic. I was told in recent years that when one of my childhood friends wanted to marry a Catholic girl, his father had threatened to kill him. Such was the ire of a parent whose bigotry and fear of being shamed overshadowed his better judgement.

In my late teenage years, I did the unthinkable: I fell in love with a stunning Catholic girl named Bridgett, who lived in Creggan, one of the largest council housing estates in Londonderry. I first met her when she came to a gig where I was playing. She caught my eye because of her beautiful looks, long, flowing blonde hair and provocative clothes. I took her home that night and we started dating. We had no problem with our being from ‘opposite sides of the fence’.

At the time, I was driving a Ford Anglia, but I wanted to borrow an MGB sports car from my friend Malachy to impress her and take her to Portrush, a popular holiday town where all the action was. He said he would allow me to have the car on one condition: I ask Bridgett if he could take her for a meal and drinks, posing as his new girlfriend to make his ex-girlfriend jealous in the hope that she would take him back. Malachy had found out when and where she would be going with her new boyfriend for a night out. The plan was that he would take Bridgett there on the same night to show that he had a new girlfriend. Bridgett kindly agreed to the arrangement. Everything went according to plan. Malachy’s ex-girlfriend looked shocked when she saw him walk in with Bridgett, but it was all to no avail – the plan did little to persuade her to take him back.

Driving Malachy’s powder blue 1963 MGB sports car with the hood down was one of the most exhilarating experiences I had ever had. I was smitten by the thought of one day owning one just like it. When Bridgett and I returned from Portrush, we visited her mother, who lived with her American boyfriend in an up-market housing estate on the outskirts of the city. When we pulled up to the house, I realised that she lived just a few houses down from my dad’s boss, who just happened to spot me and Bridgett walking into the house. He knew that she and her mother were Catholic, so he dobbed me in.

Dad’s ultimatum was swift and clear: ‘No son of mine going out with a Catholic girl will live in this house. Leave her or leave the house.’

I had never seen Mum and Dad so angry. Reminding them that I was eighteen years old and could make my own decisions about who I went out with made them even more livid.

I tried to reason with them: ‘What’s the problem with having a Catholic girlfriend. Most of our neighbours and friends are Catholics. Bridgett is a special girl and we get on well together. It’s not that I’m going to marry her.’

Dad retorted, ‘It’s one thing to be friends with a Catholic, but quite another to go out with one.’

This remark revealed how set in his ways Dad was when it came to upholding cultural norms. It was no use trying to reason with him, so I ended the altercation and told him and Mum that I was going to continue to see her and would move out of the house. I moved in with a friend from work for a while and then went to live with my auntie Alice in Portrush. Mum and Dad refused to speak to me. I remember once when walking in the town I saw Dad cross the road to avoid passing me. However, we were reconciled a few months later when Bridgett and I parted company, and I moved back home.

We were members of Claremont Presbyterian Church in Rosemount, an inner-city suburb of Londonderry about a twenty-minute drive from our house. Our minister was the Reverend Kilgore, a tall, devout man who was respected by his congregation. I remember little of his sermons, but I do recall the gist of one service that alluded to the love and devotion that one of the lady church members had showed in caring for her aged mother. While he did not mention her by name, we all knew that he was talking about our dear auntie Lena, who devoted her life to looking after Granny. She and her sister, Gladys, were Mum’s older sisters and lived with Granny. The Reverend Kilgore visited them often and was always welcomed with copious helpings of Lena’s home-made scones and fruit cake. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with him later in life.

Auntie Lena and auntie Gladys played an important part in our lives, even into our adult years. They never married, as they chose to live with and care for Granny. They lived near our school, and on Thursdays when Mum did her grocery shopping at Gault’s in the town, we went and spent time with the aunts and Granny while we waited for Mum to take us home. We were always well fed, and the food was plentiful and delicious, but, for me, their homemade tomato soup was an exception. I made no secret of my dislike of it and having to spoon it down my throat under duress. This unfortunate experience turned me off tomato soup for life.

They lived in Rosemount in a large, three-storey terrace house, which Lena cleaned from top to bottom every day. Gladys worked as a bookkeeper in a department store in the city, and had a long-term, platonic relationship with a likeable man named Raymond Platt, known to us as ‘the Sherriff’. He was always well dressed and had a wonderful sense of humour, and we all enjoyed his company.

Gladys had a bizarre, malevolent streak in her and she enjoyed seeing us trembling in fright at the sight of a deformed, crippled man called Tossie. He was the man who came every week to collect the rubbish from the houses. His face was contorted, his hands were bent, he had only a few teeth and walked with a limp because of his club foot which was turned inwards. Gladys took great delight in threatening to bring him into the house if we were naughty or did not do what we were told. It was done in jest, but to us it was no joke. The threat of having to face Tossie brought us to tears and added even more nervous tension to our lives.

Attending church for us was obligatory, as was going to Sunday school. My fondest memories of Sunday school were not related to my weekly attendance there but to the annual summer Sunday school excursion to Portrush, when I rode on the steam train which smoked, hissed and chugged its way along the winding coast, and went to Barry’s Amusements where I spent most of my well-earned pocket money.

For those on both sides of the political divide, going to church (or chapel, if one was Catholic), was more of a cultural than sacred ritual; the most important thing was to be seen to be going to church or chapel, not so much out of religious duty, but out of tradition or allegiance to one’s historical and political identity.

Like most Presbyterians, we participated in the Orange Order marching celebrations that were aimed at perpetuating the legacy of the Protestant heritage and privilege to retain its dominance in Northern Ireland and allegiance to the British Crown. The annual celebrations of 12 July and 12 August, to commemorate the victories of the Protestant King William of Orange (King Billy) over the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and the breaking of the siege of Londonderry by the Apprentice Boys in 1689, respectively, were spectacles that may have been couched in religious fervour but were displays of adulation for an earthly king, rather than shows of reverence to the heavenly King. I think that many Protestants revered King Billy more as their Saviour than they did Jesus Christ.

Dad had a simple faith and tried to live according to the moral norms of society. He was scrupulously honest in his business dealings and always tried to do the right thing by others, especially those less fortunate than himself. He never talked about his faith, but he did believe in God and enjoyed going to church and hearing the preaching of the Reverend Kilgore.

The Presbyterian Church was and still is the largest and most established Protestant church in Northern Ireland. Dad was a Methodist, and when he married Mum, he became a Presbyterian. It was common for the husband to change his membership to the church that his wife attended. So we boys were brought up as Presbyterians, but when we came of age and could make our own decisions, we stopped going to church. I had little interest in the Bible or religion, which I considered to be irrelevant and more of a cultural badge to show my Protestant colours in a divided society where one was expected to identify with others of the same ilk.

Like many of his friends, Dad was a Freemason and attended meetings at the Masonic Lodge. I knew little then about this secretive fraternity of men that seemed to be well established within the Presbyterian Church. In later years when I studied Cults and Alternative Religions, I had reason to find out more about Freemasonry and from what I learnt about its rituals and ethos, which were in essence at odds with the tenants of the Christian faith and denied biblical teaching, I was not surprised to find that Dad’s interest waned and that he left it.

We all attended the Model Primary School in Londonderry, which was a twenty-minute bus ride from our house. My first memories of my time there are not happy ones. I had a medical condition that gave me little control over my bowel movements and caused me to ‘come short’ in the classroom on several occasions. There were times when the teachers had to call one of my brothers to come and take me to the toilet and clean me up. In the worst cases, I was taken home. These awkward episodes caused me a great deal of embarrassment and distress.

Some of the other pupils in the class took every opportunity to poke fun at me and even came up with a nickname based on my unfortunate predicament: Mush. The name Mush Pillar stuck with me for the rest of my school years. Mr Miller, my Physical Education teacher in high school, only knew me as Mush Pillar, and even wrote it on the notice board when he put up the names of the various sports teams. My teammates seldom called me Granville.

If this embarrassing condition was not enough of a cross to bear, I was also afflicted with a speech impediment, or stutter, as it was called. But I was not the only one in the family with this disorder. Stan and Eddie suffered from it as well, to varying degrees of severity. It was not a genetic disorder, and the accepted theory at the time was that because we were close in age, we unconsciously developed it from each other. For some reason, Eddie acquired it, Stan developed it from him and then I developed it from the two of them. I cannot remember a time in my childhood when I did not stutter. John was spared our affliction.

We had different ways of getting out the words we wanted to say. Each of us had problem words that began with a letter we had difficulty saying, so we avoided these words and substituted them with others. I had a real problem with words beginning with ‘G’ or ‘M’, so when I had to say my name, I would say, ‘Pillar – my name is Granville Pillar’. If I was able to say a word or phrase problem-free, then the rhythm and the flow of speech helped me to say a problem word without stuttering. We helped each other by anticipating the word that the other wanted to say and saying it for him. Sometimes we would even give the other a gentle slap on the back to help him get the word out.

Not only did we utilise verbal strategies, but we also had our own unique body or head movements to aid us in expressing a word or sentence. I had the habit of kicking my right foot out in front of me, Stan would shrug his shoulders forward, and Eddie, with his mouth open, would jerk his head back. Looking back, I can see the humorous side of our difficulties in being able to communicate and can only chuckle at the unusual and rather comical sight of us conversing with feet kicking, shoulders shrugging, heads jerking – the spectacle of