Bøger af Pat Kelly

Pat Kelly, an Irishman, travels the length and breadth of post-Communist East Germany over 20 years and meets its people while learning German "on the fly" - with often hilarious results. This is a rare piece of Ostalgie travel writing in English, and essential reading for the English speaking visitor to the former East Germany and Berlin. A book filled with humour, quirky travel experiences, Ostalgie, Stasi and the ghost of an extinct state. "DDRüben - Over There" (a play on the German word "drüben" meaning "over there", used by both West and East Germans to refer to the other German state.) is the former East Germany (DDR) seen from an Irish independent traveller's perspective and experience over almost a quarter of a century. "Don't Happy - Be Worry!" read the ominous graffiti as my train headed for the Iron Curtain in the summer of 1987. When I went "over there" into East Germany, or "drüben" as the Germans say, I felt that I had exchanged a 1950s time warp (West Berlin) for a different planet. That different planet, the DDR, crashed to earth on November 9th 1989, and died at midnight on October 2nd 1990, a rare case of a modern European country simply ceasing to exist overnight. Travellers in the eastern part of Germany are haunted by the ghost of this extinct state. Independent travel in the first decade post-DDR was absolute madness, in which you could find your B&B to be a spare futon in the living room of a granny, a high-rise flat in a dodgy suburb, or even a room over a drapery shop. Ostalgie, nostalgia for the old days of the DDR, actually abounds. As one of my seventy-something year old granny hostesses said in halting English over breakfast in her sixth floor high-rise apartment, "Venn vee had ze Stasi, vee had no crime! Zey should bring zem back!", before going on to tell me about her summer holidays last year in Siberia. I stayed in the home of a rocket engineer who had loved life in the DDR, and saw his 1942 era home-made radio made of spare parts pilfered from the Wehrmacht. In Berlin, I stayed in the Stasi elite apartment block. I had the most wonderful seaside holidays on the Baltic coast, and went back in time on the ancient steam trains still running in this land that time had forgotten. This is the story of a unique destination, no longer on a map in name, but alive in spirit. DDRüben is the quirky view of a foreigner, English-speaking but not Anglophone in mentality, who has travelled extensively in the former DDR while never actually taking up residence in Germany. A little bit like Crocodile Dundee meets Heinrich Böll! It straddles Ostalgie (nostalgia for the good aspects of the former DDR, especially among East Germans) and the bad aspects, which it touches on without emphasis. The book is non-judgmental on the DDR, without overemphasising either Ostalgie or the Stasi State, and with a view to the Alltag or everyday life of people in the former DDR. A rare view is presented of what it was like in the island of West Berlin before the Wall came down, as well as the actual experience of the author of travel in East Berlin under the DDR regime. A "what if" chapter deals with the lost Eastern German Territories beyond the DDR, a subject rarely touched on in any popular writing on the subject.

It is the story of two young children, born into the poverty-stricken years of the Isle of Man, when drunkenness and smuggling were rife. Two children who were imprisoned for the heinous crime of stealing a scrap of food to keep themselves alive.Daniel, worldly-wise, who has had to fend for himself for most of his ten years of life. Unwanted from birth, abandoned and unloved, he has had the strength to develop into a caring young man, old and mature for his age.Eight-year-old Isabella, who had been forced to flee from home to escape being sold into prostitution by a depraved mother. Small for her age, she is frail and unable to look after herself.Released from gaol in Castle Rushen in midwinter, with no home to go to, the children team up in a heartrending battle for survival. As they slither rapidly into further trouble and disaster looms, it is only their involvement with a smuggling family that saves them from deportation to the Americas or possibly even death!

In 18th century Isle of Man eleven-year-old Alice Moore, was seemingly abandoned by her mother, then thrown, penniless, into the street by the landlord and left fend for herself.In her struggle to survive, she slept wherever she could find a bit of shelter and had to steal most of her food. Alice became an expert at evading capture, but at times she did not escape and on several occasions was sentenced to a term of imprisonment in Castletown gaol.Eventually, she was caught trying to steal a loaf of bread and was sentenced to be sent to 'a part beyond the seas' for a term of seven years. After several months in the dreaded Newgate Gaol, she was dispatched, with the second fleet on a vessel - the Lady Juliana - which carried only female convicts, about half of whom were prostiutes. At all the ports they called at the 'ladies of the night' plied their trade to raise a nest egg for when they arrived in their new land, and earned the ship the nickname - The Floating Brothel.A day short of a year after leaving Galleons Reach in London, and after a horrendous voyage Alice found herself in Port Jackson, in Australia, which was not the town she had expected, but just a scruffy scattering of tents and wooden huts.An even more horrifying event unfolded, when a few days after her arrival, the rest of the notorious second fleet arrived.Once again, she had to find a way to survive.

The author, who hails from Scotland, spent many hours listening to her mother-in-law recount, in vivid detail, memories of her childhood days in the tiny village of Patrick, in the Isle of Man, during the First World War. As Lou talked, the author realised she was listening to history, a lot of which no one else could tell, and that if Lou were to die, all that history would be lost forever. So she wrote it all down and turned it into Hedge of Thorns.In those days the village was dwarfed by the huge internment camp at Knockaloe, created for the accommodation of thousands of men classed as enemy aliens. Men whose only crimes were to have German, Austrian or Turkish origins.Hedge of Thorns is a true account of the impact that the Great War and the monster of Knockaloe camp had on the lives of a Manx family which still followed the traditional crofting way of life. It is a most moving and memorable story of the stresses and strains which shattered the peaceful existence of a family whose loved ones were caught up in the emergencies of war.Throughout Europe, during those dreadful war-torn years, millions of families were suffering similar deprivation, fear, loss and heartbreak.Millions died in most dreadful ways and millions more eventually returned home crippled in either body or mind. Or both!It was to be the war to end all wars, for no one could imagine such stupidity happening again but-!

The mighty water-wheel at Laxey mines in the Isle of Man has been set in motion. In its great shadow, Sarah and Patrick have fallen in love. It is a love that must be kept secret, for Patrick is Irish. Sarah’s mother — Judith — has lost her mind and blames an Irishman for her husband being imprisoned ‘across the water’ in Liverpool, where she can never visit him.The two young lovers desperately desire to wed and be together, but Judith’s increasing madness, which began when she lost some of her childer to a savage disease and deepened on her husband’s incarceration, proved too strong a pull.Sarah’s deep loyalty to her mother also stands between the lovers, indeed life itself thwarts their every effort to find a way toward their happiness.Patrick’s friend — Robert — is going to Australia to make his fortune mining for gold and has asked Patrick to accompany him. With no other option and seemingly with the cards stacked against them, Patrick and Sarah are both heartbroken.Knowing that her mother will never recover from her illness and will always need her support, Sarah tells Patrick he must go with Robert to make a life for himself without her, and to forget her, and the love they share.

The story of those who took trade unionism and working class politics to countries of the Scottish Diaspora, forming trade unions where they settled, often when membership could mean dismissal, eviction and deportation. Each chapter is a short history of a trade union or political party told through the biographies of the Scots who helped shape it.