BRAIN THE SIZE

A PLANET

Chapter One

BREAKFAST WITH NANABANANA

……

 Cillian’s head was like chalk & cheese. In the mirror he looked like any other seven year old, but every act of thinking for him was different. His eyes inside were full of colour, yet his life to others could be perplexing.

 But this Cillian Custard was a natural egghead yet was taught and imposed upon the methods of memory, however this is the romance of his early moments.

 First every night before the natural crash of his senses, his mother Floella would tuck him in at Funny Floor Cottage with his Steampunk stuffed Rabbit Daisy Doughnut. She wouldn’t read him a book or anything, as she was too thick for that. That was Nanabanana’s job. And one of his six senses would wonder what the Soup Sisters Genevieve and Selina next door were concocting for the next day’s menu, as the odour of their cooking invaded the crevices in the brickwork.

 As by oneself his imagination could see the Ice Cream Moon, of those mind’s eye wonder years. Floella thought he was a fruitcake, with thoughts that only he could invent and see. All Cillian had to do was look into the eyes of his anthropomorphic Daisy Doughnut, and he was off. This stuffed doorstop doll animated his imagination and followed him on his endless spectrum of adventures in his mind that he could with fantasy simply shape and change. And Cillian always whispered to his much loved soulmate steampunk doll so as not to disturb the Soup Sisters of the Something Tasty Soup Shop next door. So Cillian and Daisy Doughnut had many therapeutic conversations at night of Newtonian Classical Mechanics and the latest offerings at the Rinkha, like the smooth rich creamy toffee ice cream with honeycomb pieces intermingled or the lemon ice cream with a swirl of lemon curd and a scattering of meringue pieces. Sometimes if Daisy Doughnut had a real brain or soul, she would wish she was free from this nonsense and back in the Belfast Love Shop for stuffed toys to escape Cillian Custard as he was such a torturous and cerebral geek.

 Daisy Doughnut was the insufferable ears for Cillian Custard and his young evolving mind. As he would say things at night while looking out the window, ‘‘Look at Mister Marshmallow face the Moon just like Wordsworth wandering lonely as a mass of water particles in air with those cloud shapes’’ he murmured. ‘‘They are so like the pigs from the Shankill Shambles Slaughterhouse, as he covers the ice cream moon.’’

 The story telling device Daisy Doughnut obviously does not answer. She had a face that was embroidered with an expression as if to say “What the Dickens?” As this doorstop doll from Downpatrick listens to his endless repetitive fables, and how the intervention of Cillian’s sensational senses that make his childhood happy with the chemicals in his brain doing their thing.

 However this Steampunk Daisy Doughnut was not knitted by Freud, and is so unaware that sometimes human brains go a bit funny in flight of fancy with illusions and that is okay. Her stuffing has no substance or soul and this his actual imaginary friend the punk of steam, just goes along with everything young Cillian had to say. Every night it is the flight of the ice cream scoop moon and all the goodnight ghosts, that only Cillian in his child’s eye mind and creativity can see. Ferris next door was never one to experience this joy, as his brother had his own prison of venomous ways that sometimes negatively impacted upon the emotional ways of his brother Cillian. These two were complete other sides of the coin apart. Fred & Flo of Sandy Row would always ask why Cillian and Ferris could hate each other without actually wanting to know each other. But Ferris was not one for thinking like Cillian. His mind barren of creativity but more eminent in engineering as he knew the workings of those magical Etienne Lenoir Internal combustion engines invented in 1860 but was empty of human connection with Cillian. A great mind is sometimes something two sibling persons cannot share.

 However in the morning his mother Floella who is also blind to his brain, calls him for breakfast. Cillians’s mother Floella a delightful creature, was definitely the hen who hatched the genius duck. And her flair was with food and fabrics. Her homecooked provision the sense grabbing taste of fare of fried soda, fried farls amidst potato bread and eggs of dairy with that heart desisting cardiovascular of bacon. Touting sauce too, as nothing tasted like Floella’s Ulster Fry as chambers of the heart cried in fear.

 And also sharing the table every morning was the magic and verbal wisdom of his Grandma Nanabanana with more lines on her face than the fourth rock Mars. She was an oracle of information and Maud is never seen without a Guinness. Yet quite an ugly creature but in her day, she was once as hot as Helen of Troy. But some people are truly gifted with beauty of a timeless kind, and Nanabanana to Cillian Custard who understood his promethean vision was surely one of those souls.

 She wore a wart on her nose like the clowns at the Astronomical Acrobats Circus, yet she was also wise and indifferent as she too had a brain the size a planet and smelt of old books.

 And every breakfast his much loved Maud Nanabanana once some great social hierarchy of the Island of Rathlin and proprietor of The Custard Cake & Cuppa Fun Teashop, and she would impose information and hilarity to inspire his intellect. And even over Ulster Fry, Nanabanana would read from memory the musings of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, riveting Cillian with this English literary classic. And sometimes Nanabanana would read macabre gothic fiction and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe. It was so much fun over the first meal of the day.

 Her knowledge was never ending and she had facts of wonder every day. This morning it was no matter how much money you have like the Mill Owner of York Road, you still only eat a few meals a day. Yesterday it was No matter how big your house is on Malone Road, you only sleep in one bed. And Fred who did not enjoy her trespass on his eardrums wished that he had a chastity belt for her mouth. She knew in Cillian’s company over breakfast, that he was from these early days possibly an enormously gifted child. She never once thought that his mind of great pictures was away with the fairies let alone the milk from the dairies.

 She was his rock and almanac of information. Even over breakfast she would smile and say, “My Grandson Cillian of Tea Lane, it is you and I and an Ulster Fry”.

 So every morning eyes down, she with the cabaret of learning where never once could he bite of more than he could chew.

 His wise and cognitive Nanabanana Maud this mother of invention, would later serve him the side course of Zappa Flakes in fresh cream, then talk about Italian Polymath Leonardo and his extraordinary powers of invention and that painting of Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo who Maud said was always moaning like his mother hence it’s artistic name. She was great fun at a party to the empty minds of others. And this wonderful maternal grandma at weekends would take Cillian out to the Fat Fanny Fish chippy run by their friend Frances of Angry Anchovy street for gourmet offerings of fried chips soaked in mushy peas. Maud’s favourite too, and surely a meal fit for the Palace and their much admired British Queen Victoria. And here her mind did not attract the curiosity of others over chips.

 Yet his mother Floella was the total opposite to the psychology and mental grace of Maud Nanabanana. As every morning her first comical words as Cillian clambered down the stairs was, “Here comes the thing that reads a lot!” She never once questioned his curiosity or understood his deepest thoughts, but his mum Floella she could fortuitously cook and knit socks. So she wasn’t that thick or as dim as the light from Alpha Centauri. But sometimes she questioned his pathological animosity and friction with Ferris.

 And then as regular as the Ormeau Bakery Bell, every morning his father the fantastically thick Fred was at the door of Funny Floor Cottage. His goodbye ovation before his sunrise walk to the yard of shipbuilders The Darling & Dogg Docks, that was a sideshow of a hundred nautical trades. After the delicious business of breakfast, he said goodbye to them all. His gift of chandlery and way with sculpture of seafaring wood at the city docks. And here he built his latest adventure in shopfitting and nautical architecture, the RMS Big Fish. And before you ask, it really did look like a big fish.

 But even as his father Fred left the House of Knobos with it’s funny floor, he was always consumed by his own top of the morning Father show, with every monopoly of thoughts insensitive to the lives around him. He was a nice man, yet sometimes a selfish wrapped up in oneself weasel. There was no democracy in Funny Floor Cottage, only his dictatorship and dullness of his one dominating mind that felt celebrated by the sound of it’s own voice.

 Yet the whole city was talking about this great ship the Big Fish that his hands helped to build, and the newspapers carried cartoons of parody that even Captain Nemo written by Jules Verne was quaking in his boots. As this boat, that looked like Moby Dick pursued by Captain Ahab had eaten all the pies. And everyone in Tea Lane from the Soup Sisters to Jill the Junkie knew that Fred was a shipbuilding genius and quite handy with the mahogany, yet the true truth was that he was a seemingly gifted man of low intelligence who knew the difference between a big dinner and a little dinner. He had brains in other areas, and was a genius of another world that no-one could quite define. So his father Fred provided and he loved in his own way, yet his empathy to creative thought was icy and like his great ships sank into nothingness. He has a real value of top cat person with his influence in Funny Floor Cottage, until that someone of negative disparage becomes an irresolute memory. His moulding to Cillian, he was that likeable yet liable nemesis that could not see Mars for the Moon or the light at the end of the tunnel because it was a train. Fred was not a man of culture nor chronicle of world events, and certainly not Granma Nanabanana’s cup of tea. As their clash of personality was like going to the bingo with Ghengis Khan.

 A lifetime later and his farewell as cabinetmaker and master carpenter of his life and industry at the shipbuilders The Darling & Dogg Docks. His winter years forty years forward, and Cillian too not as young as he used to be, took his father Fred the senior Mister Custard on a magical trip round England in his new motor the beautiful bang up to the elephant Vauxhall thirty horse-power landaulette type B-Eleven that he had charismatically called the Cat’s Pyjamas Car. He even painted a cat logo on the doors as Cillian in his later years was quite partial to the graphics of art as his imagination discovered another mastery with pictures.

 It was a beautiful week of closure away in this candy car blue lily model that was complete with visiting his favourite decommissioned ship The Big Fish, that was to be taken away to Pakistan and every tiny bit of something to be melted down and turned into cookers and these great new inventions of planes. His soul showed great sadness in Southampton, as this great ship that he once dressed with Honduran mahogany in his days as a shipwright was doomed to destruction in the East.

  And in this colossal vehicle and great invention of the new century, that purred like the greatest cat but not like the one painted on the door. They then made adventure and diversion to the prehistoric henge by Amesbury to see Stonehenge that has defied all science and research by the Victorians of its true astronomical purpose and antiquity. Was it a conspiracy created by Merlin, a Moon worship site or some place to recycle the dead. Nobody actually knew, not even Nostradamus. Who probably thought it was a dance hall for the Druids.

 And Fred his first impression with his brain boiling over with no understanding of these giant blue stones, he described this vintage structure of Stonehenge like this. “Let’s go Cillian my buffoon of a boy Silly Custard, it is just a pile of old rocks.”

 That nickname ‘Old Rocks’ to remain indefinitely, till blue in the face or when the cows come home. His comic rationalisation such a ridicule to the reasoning of Cillian, as he could not start to capture his father’s stupidity. He was as blind as the three mice and the Miller and his merry Wife. Whatever and so, Fred Custard was truly the intellectual darkness of mankind. Thicker than the dictators of a Banana Republic.

 But with father Fred now called ‘Old Rocks’ in his traditional manner of thinking, Cillian always knew that he was as thick as a whale omelette and didn’t expect anything else. He always smiled and laughed, yet sometimes in secret craved for understanding in hidden tears. As his life would have been different if his dad was not such a dimwit and the imbecile of Belfast. This mind damage from Funny Floor Cottage you carry forever, as his father wore the shirt of the most charming and least intelligent man you could ever meet. His mind was like the marriage of a plank of wood with a monkey from the Congo.

 But back to the early days growing up with the fantastically thick Fred. Every mouthful from his father was a horror story or an adventure, and Cillian was always hoping that a magical day would arrive that he could understand that it should be considered as great a disgrace to abuse a child’s savant mind as it is not to read a good book. But Cillian knew that he had more chance of finding a virgin in a maternity ward than reasoning with his Dad the fantastically thick Fred.

 So the clown of the cobbles Cillian became in his dad’s fun stories of his own son that he called Silly Custard. He said that he was destitute of reality and had an apparently incoherent childhood, even though Cillian had an area of a fantastic mind that his parents Fred & Flo just could just not reach.

 And in this innocence before the discovery and wormhole of his imagination, Fred would many times package Cillian his son as underdog and be prey to his humour. And what a birdbrain he was. He was personal but never nasty as it was the way of his own barbaric and unevolved conditioning. As Fred could not understand that he had his own demons that he could rent out to the Haunted House attraction that had a freakshow of possessed people and witches at Donaghadee.

 Yet in his own way and heart, fantastically thick Fred was basically a good man with just no understanding that Cillian had successfully by his own choice and methodology had found a great adventure of life in books.

  And his classic joke in the company of endless obsolete strangers was this. His great laugh. “Meet my delightful son Cillian of generation Custard always lost in his delusion of Dickens and Shakespeare while pigging out at Rinkha Parlour, yet blessed with lovely nature he is all but the most drifting and stupid child in Belfast and watch while I prove this to you.”

 His intellectually starved father Fred the true fool of Tea Lane, without pangs of conscience would place a silver shilling in one palm and a penny of Queen Victoria with her hair beautiful in a bun on the other. And offer Cillian the wager of choice of coin, for him to then briskly leave. And Cillian would always smile and retreat in pleasure with the copper penny. His father Fred in the company of strangers would pee his pants laughing and say “My child Silly Custard never learns!”

 However his most scholarly friend Giuseppe Leonardo, the boss of the Rinkha who once designed public houses and churches and was wise to the World. He once asked “Then why my friend little Cillian Custard the sharp cookie and brains and top dog of Tea Lane, as he served him a double scoop of ice cream dressed with sauce and rainbow drops to the value of that penny. Tell me why do you always choose the copper Queen?” To which Cillian without hesitation replied, “It’s not the science of the talking telegraphs Giuseppe or the Chinese Rocket Men. I am not a clot when there is ice cream. The day I accept the silver shilling the joke dies. The game is over. And I am here every day for your fortune of ice cream, so Giuseppe just welcome your successive business.”

 Great thinking and words for a child of seven, thought Giuseppe. Even though it was a horrible negative principle. But as Cillian grew into a fine young man, in his later years he became in some unknown fear a clone of his father. Cillian always wanted someone in authority to look up to, so on many occasions of life he adapted an archetypal role of his father Fred, while he discovered who he really was. And Cillian took years to understand himself, as he was nothing like his controlling and dominating brain dead dad or anyone else for that matter. In some unknown fear that he could not reason or fathom at seven, he became the clone of his dad Fred, if only to survive in a house of fools. Nanabanana was the only one that nurtured intelligence in Funny Floor Cottage, even if she sometimes talked of Spaceships and little green men landing on the Shankill and over Guinness she was quick to point out that they were not Leprechauns.

 But Cillian himself in light of every eccentricity of life, he always thought that close to home your father is someone you are asserted to be able to rely upon. Yet he was continually tortured by his toxic mind games, and left empty and abandoned in Funny Floor Cottage by his father the fantastically thick Fred. Granma Nanabanana compensated, as she was the only one to enjoy and capture the surface of his miraculous thought process. She assured Cillian of the ancient Greek Tragedian called Sophocles who once wrote that parents are naturally blinded by adoration, but in his case everything went over their heads. And so regular life at home did not continue with any observation of genius in Cillian. Nanabanana always made him her treasured grandson smile like a Cheshire cat as she always said, “Cillian your dad Fred is so thick that if you told him the Moon was populated by Leprechauns with rivers of Guinness, he would most likely believe you!”

 And Dumbledog the street pooch would sometimes bite Fred, as he did not embrace him like the Parish. Only Granma Nanabanana with her linguistics and understanding of Newtonian Classical mechanics touched upon the veneer of his mind, and that in Funny Floor Cottage was taboo over tea.

 But there was a good side, and beautiful it truly was. As for many a moon, Cillian and his seemingly brain dead Dad Fred who to Nanabanana had the loneliest brain cells in Belfast  had their weekend walks on the Cave Hill setting a small fire and cooking breakfast sausage with haricot beans. Such a happiness of the Sunday campfire, as his Dad always surrendered his time to his son. And here he did the father and son bit, yet talking about his boats was as boring as knitting socks in Crumlin Road Jail. As they didn’t talk much in mutual alliance or explore Cillian’s creativity. That was another planet for Fred. There was not the slightest understanding of his power of invention or any mutual appreciation of his worship of science and literature. But then that went two ways as Cillian certainly did not want to talk about dry docking or nautical engineering, or how much ballast the Big Fish had. Fred would then spend hours telling him his son Cillian how the big new metal ships were held together. It was riveting. He would rather have drunk beer with Ebenezer Scrooge on Mars, or wish that Nanabanana was a go-go dancer in the long lost city of Atlantis. So it went two ways. It seems it was his father Fred’s own uneducated choice never to be roused or have any reflection or flight of fancy on him, as all he could see and feel was his own thoughts and opinion and science of shipping. But Sunday with Fred was always pleasing, and sometimes they climbed the Napolean’s Nose Mountain looking over the city of Belfast.

 Next day time for school and the barefoot walk once again from the door of Funny Floor Cottage. Cillian looked up at the bedroom window and saw the face of philosophy in Daisy Doughnut. Nanabanana was at the door too, as he then left for what was labelled the system of education. Here to share the basics of social structure and indoctrination with a room full of vacuum skull boneheads at The Little Heads of Belfast National.

 Thinking in the vision of thoughts, he says in stuffed doll talk, “It is not goodbye, my dumb doorstop doll Daisy Doughnut!” Who this morning like every other was pulling her normal confused fabric face against the glass. Cillian then said, “I will see you later, so keep being awesome my treasured doorstop doll!” Cillian would say all this all in pretend rhapsody every morning, while closing the door on the pint-sized Funny Floor Cottage. And painted on the back of this door was an illustration of an angel with a conference of words that said “Angels Watch Over This House”. Symbolic from where his Mother Floella and sometimes her creator Granma Nanabanana were great sidekicks in this brainwash conditioning of Biblical bull. Their only true flaw that Cillian could really see in their minds was this great social compromise of cloud cuckoo land superstition. As it seemed everybody in Oireland had this imagination drug programmed into their head, where in one street their Jesus was better than your Jesus. Cillian thought it was twice as stupid as believing in the time travelling zombies that walked the stone circles on the Cave Hill, or that St Patrick led the snakes out of Oireland on his boneshaker bike.

 Time for school, and here they did this havoc of belief too. The nice side every morning was the meeting of his two intuitive friends Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead who sometimes knocked the door, and made funny squealing noises outside. Charlie, his family owned the A Quarter of Sweet Shop on Precocious Lane, and Fiddlehead was better known as Amadeus as his family ran the local Stradivarius Boutique violin shop that you could hear from Hercules Street while doing your homework. Well every Victorian quarter of Belfast seemed to have this sanctuary of musical genius. His real name Amadeus, after Mozart the prolific classical composer. But Cillian and Charlie and like everyone else in Tea Lane just called him Fiddlehead. And they were not insinuating that he was a crook or anything. And neither was Little Heads of Belfast that name too. They invented that school name. To them it was the most stupid exchange of information as this grand gothic hall of thinking was actually in Gaelic or Rosetta Stone Latin called the King of the Kerry Leprechauns. Or whatever it was really called, so they just abbreviated it short and sweet to Little Heads of Belfast as another toy of their imagination.

 Walking to this centre of learning every morning, Cillian always had some folk wisdom to share with his friends. Cillian read a lot so he was always showing of with his parley of words. This morning he amused them with this fact. And that was that for one second in eighteen sixty four he was once the youngest person on Earth, and that anecdote went over the heads of Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead.   

 Perfect timing after the second strike of the Ormeau Bakery Bell, and the three of them were on the cold cobbles to Little Heads. Chocolate Charlie would say in his almost alien Ulster accent “What about yeah Mucker”. Sometimes Dumbledog the street pooch would follow them, and lick their hands every ten seconds, whatever that did for him.

 Soon like every other day of assorted adventure, they would arrive at Little Heads for more grooming of knowledge and conditioning. And this refuge of information was deafened by the terminus of the Ulster Railway next door.

 The walk was a torment on their toes as it seems that shoes were a luxury and great invention for the rich, as they made their way over cobbles and horse poop to their school on Zeroo Street.

 And every morning on their way across Belfast, they would sometimes wave to a friendly Nun by the Convent of Great Virtue, who would exchange biscuits and barms while imparting information of science. She had this great charismatic personality and was extremely intelligent and learned, but when they are confronted with this Bible basher for Cillian alone could never fathom her belief and abuse of imagination. Yet she was so bright like a prophet of University. So with great sarcasm to her motor skills and intellect, he nicknamed her Nun the Wiser. And sometimes with her clever clogs knowledge, Cillian would secretly brand her as Our Lady of Immaculate Reception even if she was annoyingly clever. Once she said to Cillian that having your family beside you is the greatest fortune. With Cillian thinking that she obviously hasn’t met his pervert brother Ferris.

 And later down the road this three laughed at the psychology of the Belfast City street planners, that the lane itself was named after some apocryphal Roman Gladiator called Zeroo. Cillian once told his friends Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead that he had read about this Gladiator Zeroo in the Glover library, who was quite unsuccessful with the Celtic Warriors in his combats during the Roman conquest. So some fool in town planning that they christened as Mister Paperclips, thought it was quite fitting to call this passage Zeroo Street upon which is now home to the travel of trains and the training of young human minds. Not such a good advertisement like the sweet sounds of the streets of Oxford and their intellectual houses of learning.

 And on their way to Little Heads of Belfast this particular morning, his sidekicks and associates Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead look up to Cillian and ask what’s the plan today Rinkha Thinker. And he was always quick with wit to say to his fellow pupils, “Today our teacher Miss Honeyhole, has asked me to read to the class. The famous fairytale that follows the rule of three, the Three Bears.” Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead said, “Tell us more about this odyssey of fiction Cillian.” And he was quick to say, “Well I once understood that this was the work of Poet Laureate Robert Southay of Wine Street Bristol, and Miss Honeyhole thought I would be good at presenting the message of the Goldilocks Principle where a planet’s atmosphere is neither too hot or too cold to host intelligent life. Then tell that the Three Bears become more savvy about security, then maybe Goldilocks learns to show more respect for the property of others. But whatever, it’s a nice story and much more fun than Pythagoras and Latin.”

 And Chocolate Charlie and Fiddlehead, they looked up at Cillian as if to say, “Much as we share amity with you our friend Cillian Custard at the house of three R’s, why does your head scream with information like this. You’re only seven and like us you should be pulling pigtails, you’re a fairy tale of magic ways and secret castles yourself!”

 So arriving at Little Heads, and abiding to the duty of reading The Three Bears, after the odyssey of the shoeless walk. Cillian started to read to the less wiser elements of the class this assignment of fiction that carried meaning. Miss Honeyhole with her imposing property of attractiveness was sitting back with her Ballycastle Whisky reading Wuthering Heights, while Cillian captures the classroom audience and does her job for her. This version was of a soft snug and warm family story, with a great hint of menace. Aroused with such fun and confidence, and here a simple story for their guileless imagination with all the acoustics and escapism for sure. Miss Honeyhole as she engaged in her very absorbing book about landed gentry and posh people living on the West Yorkshire Moors while downing her Causeway Coast Liquor. She said, “Away you go Sunshine Choppers, the floor and room is all yours!”

 Looking at his captive front row audience of Agnes Bogbrush, Molly Morelli and Ignatius Lemongrass from the Lisburn Road. And he was the star attraction and knew that the class were curious about the science and drive of his mind. About thirty in the class with him this morning, who seen that his vision for pen and paper was much more fun than the misery of bread & butter bare-footed Belfast. Top dog and speaker of this class of eighteen seventy two was Cillian and his brain was truly in their eyes the size a Planet. Many moons before this brand was invented for the silly seaside shows.

 However back to the babe of the book, Cillian then thought. So this picky blonde with the perfect hair and looks simply walks into someone else’s house and eats their oats? Bit of an innuendo that one, and then all the swopping beds thing. Cillian thought he was not buying that, but then the class so loved the reading of that fun story. The younger elements of the class were so curious of the anthropomorphic aspect of these talking bears. And from here he was careful not to disappoint them by revealing that bears do indeed possess the vocabulary of a goldfish swimming in a nirvana of amnesia. And nor was he to blind them with the Goldilocks Principle that has a wider range of disciplines in psychology, astronomy, economics and engineering. As they were certainly not built to think or dream of information like this Cillian Custard. They could barely imagine the concept of a brain. To some of them he was Cillian the cart load of mental Bullshit.

  But that sense and excitement of a new book to them, no matter how simple. He felt it was his obligation to let them sink and escape from the world, even if it was to be by another writer’s imagination. With this fairy tale to the class, He knew that they too could create their own cartoons. As everything a mind can picture and see becomes real. Whatever the adventure of education actually is, He would naturally think that the torture from their teacher Miss Honeyhole’s monotonous dull as dishwater regimentation of calculation, reckoning and calligraphy was about as much use as a chocolate cauldron. There has got to be a better way. This Little Heads of Belfast classroom Cillian Custard attained was some sort of fun prison without bars.

  And it felt like a church too, as rocking the week’s first day of school the class sang assembly. The business of the music was to wash their brains with the invisible man in sky and the magic baby lark, where their hearts of history and where they lived in Belfast set them apart. The real world was a bigger fairy tale than the Three Bears. And here around the school potbelly stove, Miss Honeyhole was asking early uneducated minds to believe blindly and to degenerate the human soul with invented stories of after life. Lots of tales more fun than who’s been eating my porridge, especially the one about the big biblical boat with all the menagerie of life. Cillian always struggled to reason with the classroom dunce Darcy who carried a Bible that the Ark was not built at Darling & Dogg Docks, nor any shipyard for that matter. But he had a brain the size a doughnut, so Cillian felt he would have got more psychology and sense playing the Queen’s Gambit in Chess with Dumbledog.

  And this Darcy character was constantly teased in class for his fabulously low intelligence. And here Cillian would always jest about the one particular moment that tickled him was when Miss Honeyhole offered Darcy the chance to shine in the class and regale how the Egyptains built the Pyramids. Now young Darcy armed with what information his mind had, he said it was physically quite easy as it was only in the late summer of 1666 that Isaac Newton actually described and researched the laws of gravity. And that the Pyramids of Giza were built in the Fourth Dynasty of the old period of Egypt around 2600BC. So it was quite easy to move the rocks about then as gravity was not invented yet. But thick Darcy was nothing, as there was always a greater loss of reason in the school with belief in a higher power. Darcy even thought that Easter Island was where Jesus lived and they all ate chocolate eggs and that all the dinosaurs died out ages ago as no-one lives forever and that’s why all the fossils died. Darcy even once responded to a drawing he seen of his mother pregnant while carrying his brother, and while not expressing the facts of life Darcy assumed she had once ate him. He was as thick as the hulls at the Belfast shipyards. But thick Darcy had his moments when he was not so daft. He once described a horse and carriage in Sandy row.  He said no matter how slick and fancy these new carriages are, they will never replace a set of healthy legs.

  But Cillian Custard’s mind never adjusted or accepted this stupidity with Vicar of Chalkboard Miss Honeyhole washing their brains with fictitious religious beliefs, and all this your soul that lives forever nonsense. It is like the creepy conditioning of the dark ages, putting all your hopes and fears into the hands of something you cannot touch or fondle with your thoughts. Cillian would rather believe and gather that the famous French writer Jules Verne had tea and biscuits with a party of Monkeys on the Moon.

  Then almost instantly, reality emerged. A real-life god appeared in the classroom, that was so genuine in existence. And the Little Heads of Belfast became versed in tutorials of an inventory of new phrases shaken from the Englishman called the Bard, who it seemed had more gift of the gab and soft soap of the Blarney. He said, the time of life is short, all the world’s a stage and love looks not with eyes but with mind. Cillian Custard was always unceasingly baffled and thought how was it possible that anyone could think and imagine to connect such beauty of words in an age before typographers of business communication arrived. And what if we had a great society of philosophers like Dickens or this Shakespeare in power then the politics of peace would be perfect between England and Oireland and every nationality embezzled and bagged by the British Empire.

  Miss Honeyhole was a follower and great knight of grammar, and the class always looked forward to this routine of instruction. Yet she and the school was brutal and engaging. Everyday each child was scrapping for seats in a classroom heated by a single potbelly stove, and from here Miss Honeyhole would bellow her catchphrase and slogan “Wait till I tell yeah.” As what they hear from her is the sterling gospel truth. Their heads filled with memory of facts absolutely no use whatsoever. Especially when your family finances condemn you to take to the difficult overwhelming tradition of twelve hours a day in the cotton mill. These hated halls of industry with their sun blinding smokestacks were everywhere shading all the squishmallow clouds. That curse of life that only a few could dare or try to break the cycle, yet Miss Honeyhole she would always promote the class with her positive aura of opportunity. Despite the fact that here their brains were on a budget, as these early literates were chicken hearted and cowed by the brutal pleasure of the cane. Yet it was an arousing room where the class where touched without the percussion of contact.

  New words were learned and used every day. Today Cillian learned the true meaning and use of onomatopoeia, encyclopedia and thesaurus this classroom sunrise. Each word for all practical purposes is new to his mind, yet each came with it’s specific understanding in English. So kind that Miss Honeyhole has now given words to describe things that Cillian naturally first understood in it’s concept form. “So learn to talk proper, we must,” said Miss Honeyhole the legend and much respected head turner. She was a doll of their elocution, who was certainly to many an attractive easy on the eyes honey with mammaries like the Mournes. Like many, Cillian felt deep in irony just reading the language of her body. And felt it was a positive experience to be taught by this lonesome yet pleasing looking teacher Miss Honeyhole. Pretty as a picture she was this eye candy of the classroom who was engaged and controlled by many diverting aspects of her own life. Cillian by nature always choose to see her amiability, as he always seen the good in people and knew that she certainly had a story to tell and a different condition of mind. As underneath her brutal animosity with the world and her big stick when you riled her, she was a nice person. And all the men would look at her as she was pretty and had all the parts in the right place. Miss Honey was quite acclaimed for her beauty around Belfast but Cillian knew that no matter how stunning the beauty is of Miss Honeyhole, it will surely fade in time, but he wasn’t going to spoil her perfect life and tell her.

 But this school of Little Heads was certainly not a challenging experience nor any invitation of success like those big houses of learning across the water in Oxford, this city of dreaming spires. Cillian here was constantly bored and endlessly uninspired, so every moment of distraction he would carve poetry into the tables or any surface he could fashion. And here are some of the masterpieces for posterity that he carved, like this one. ‘By the end of Tea Lane off Precocious Place, lived a mind that thought at a ridiculous pace.’ Then one day he wrote, ‘The dog ate my homework just like it was beef so I said sorry to Miss Honeyhole who gave me some grief.’ Then his favourite one, ‘Outside the Fat Fanny I saw a gorilla chasing granny so I didn’t run or scream at he in case he thought I was his tea.’ Another epic carving but it didn’t rhyme was this ‘Some people are only alive right now because someone decided not to kill them’.

 Yet this his most special and poignant poem was this. ‘Memory is made of this, an artist’s painting or a lovers kiss. A baby’s smile, a special look, an inscription in a favourite book. A catchy half-forgotten phrase, a wooden top that was once the latest craze. All of these each play their part, in keeping memory in our heart.’

 What a most innocent vandal Cillian Custard was with his incision on timber. It did not consent to rhyme like any alliteration and verbal harmony of the great poets Lord Byron and Keats. However the verve was certainly there, yet his words were not written with the great rhythmic qualities of William Wordsworth or Samuel Coleridge that Cillian shared with Daisy Doughnut by candlelight with his poetry putting at least one of them to sleep that night.

 Afterwards this morning of reading, and soon the school dinners attack the senses. Cooking over the potbelly stove, Miss Honeyhole served her regular urn of Leek Potato Mushroom soup as a starter with Broccoli dripping in white sauce. It was gorgeous every time to Cillian’s tastebuds, and he would review the school dinners to Pru as she made her stew at the Fat Fanny Fish & Chip.

 And after the broccoli, was the queue for the two at the outdoor john, with no Armitage Shanks at the bogs of Hades. Certainly not those posh Thomas Crapper devices you see plumbed proper in all those big made of money houses around Malone Road. This classroom toiletry was lost in time, with no honey water nor oil of roses. It was a smelly slimehole cesspit. Only an oasis of malignant fevers and the smell of pungent body ruin in a hole in the ground like nature intended. And from here god willing, possibly the worst excuse for an outhouse latrine ever on Earth. Not even a curtain at this powder room, where the kids went train spotting through the bellowing steam.

 Then apres the soup gourmet from Hell’s Kitchen by Miss Honeyhole, the euphoria of playtime blissfully followed. Here the children were learning the train plates, observing shapes in clouds like Missus Marshmallow Face, chasing games, hopscotch, skipping and even kiss chase with Agnes Bogbrush. As despite her grotesque name, she was quite noticeable of attractive nature to the eyes of boys for some at that fair age of discovery and adolescence ripening. Not her real name you are assured as it was just a pseudonym for her father who was one of those creepy night soil men who emptied the outhouse latrines in Tea Lane. This was an almost impossible job with donkey and cart, and was an excellent incentive to acquire an education. Her real name that Cillian then attained was that she was Agnes Fogg, and that her dad cleaned the bog.

 Then Miss Honeyhole the Pied Piper of Little Heads School with bell and vocals, called the class back to the room. Time for Trigonometry and the irritation of Algebra now, and you could tell that she enjoyed saying that. For many it was the harrowing sitting of the numbers class with her torture and rota of calculus. This was certainly to many not the fun and exercise of the playground.

 First Miss Honeyhole would advertise numbers as the universal language, and then she looks into the eyes of her childlike trusting fools and Miss Honeyhole looking superior would always start the lesson with some simple sum and say, “What is seven and nine!” And Cillian finally at his wit’s end and his mind faster than the Pope Cycling up the Shankill was in the back in secret reading Charles Dickens The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And he decided that that was enough and then while shaking his head, he said. “What sort of class is this? To Miss Honeyhole this disciplinarian, educator and spinster of house of cats who then said, “It is a class where you don’t speak without permission, young Cillian Custard!” But he then replied, “Surely everyone knows seven and nine are sixteen Miss Honeyhole. As even our descendants according to Darwin and his book on the Beagle the Origin of the Species, that even the Bonobo Monkeys from the Congo Rain Basin could tell you what seven and nine are!”

 Miss Honeyhole came to say, “Then intellect and animation of my ace egghead Cillian Custard, then what in this system of seven planets is sixty four and eighty three please.” Cillian was quick to please at this simple addition and said, “Just a hundred and forty seven Miss Honeyhole, still easy so throw them at me, but not quite at the monkey’s level!” So she continued, “And so Ice Cream brain Cillian Custard of Tea Lane, you can add instantly without ink nor abacus, but can you in addition to this attribute multiply and address other calculations? Count with us Cillian Custard from Funny Floor Cottage, what is twenty three by sixty two?” Immediately Cillian makes known the answer, “Fourteen twenty six Miss, and I am not taking the piss!” And Miss Honeyhole in reciprocation says, “Profanity my little sprout, language like linen looks best when it is clean and every time you talk your mind is on display. But now my mathematical genius child with the most innocent sterile mind yet foul mouth. Give me more magic of these great things in your head, like how many days have passed of this year of eighteen seventy two?”

 And Cillian replied like a fox chasing a chicken round the Filthy Fowl Farm on the Falls Road, “Of course it’s a leap year Miss Honeyhole, as MDCCCLXXII started Monday on Georgian so today Tuesday twenty fourth October with clouds of custard cream is day two hundred and ninety eight, and if you want the hours too it is seven thousand one hundred and forty two to this moment now give or take ten minutes.”

 Miss Honeyhole in shock, she says “Frigging Falls Road Fudge, how mind blowing is this Sunshine Choppers, dear brain of Egghead Cillian. You have cerebral constipation with numbers. Amazing work, but where did this come in when you cannot see things for what they really are. Really advanced sums for seven my son, as no-one can compete or get between your ears. You are so alone with your needs and genius. Odd  Cillian Custard in odd we trust, as you have the highest echelons of intelligence! Is it fun having a brain that works that fast?”

 Miss Honeyhole in surprise she says, “Dear Cillian with your wonderful innocent numerical ways, I must first ask you this but who else has experience and knows of your reckoning with numbers?” All Cillian could first think of and say of was this, “Well Bertie Boatwright of the Big Fish & Cow Corner shop end of Tea Lane. He knows I add up the bill faster than his till and says that I have a particular set of skills, so he doesn’t mess with me when Floella or Nanabanana send me there shopping. They save a fortune when I go on errand as I never fall victim as a sacrificial lamb to his financial fiddles!”

 But his sharp as a tack know-how of numbers he choose to keep covert, as all his sideshows of sums made people look at him in odd ways. Cillian of course had his methods and strategy. All he did was break a big sum into lots of smaller equations. And this private affair of mathematics started when his Granma Nanabanana first kindly shared this secret of sums with him, and this mental heritage from Maud came from her wonder years visit to a most splendid university in Switzerland.

 But then real credit to his wonderland of numbers went to his faithful family friend Patrick O’Trachtenberg from the Falls Road who he too was a mad professor of numbers. He was also some pioneer of political and evangelical reform movements. But what a clever cookie he was. His assimilation of information provided great intellectual stimulus, as he read and shared with Cillian his great algebraic explanations. He showed him much greater techniques with the times tables that only the unhinged scientists from the Oxford beer parlours knew. This genius taking place in clandestine while his parents Fred & Flo with Nanabanana kissed rivers of Guinness at the Lily Bar. Always coming home steaming, and Nanabanana going screwball with her Sambuca. Patrick he showed Cillian as his protege such wonderful ways of numbers that even Leonardo da Vinci did not know. He was too busy inventing the Clockwork Car, Robot Knights and a Flying Machine Ornithopter. Even painting that portrait of the Italian noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo. To his innovative open mind, O’Trachtenberg’s ways was like learning another language. And that is what numbers are if they please you that way.

 Miss Honeyhole, her mind was far too futile to understand this depth and process if she ever asked exactly the workings of the techniques of Patrick O’Tractor which she discourteously called him. Yet she always seemed to take pleasure in watching Cillian and his delivery of some massive mind bending cardinal characters. Yet away from numbers with the other language, there was one moment in class when Miss Honeyhole shouted at Cillian to name a few pronouns and he whispered back in tone of question, “Who, me!” But sometimes Miss Honeyhole was not exhilarated by his magnetic wit. So constantly Miss Honeyhole found informative and creative ways to amuse the class, and for Cillian to play the clown with his readings.

 The class of Little Heads, they so loved his literature and superior writings of lasting artistic merit, and cooperate Cillian certainly did. He knew that he was blessed, and could motivate and inspire. However he was never alone in this enterprise, especially with his accomplice of information, his classroom colleague Costas, who he taught the verbal lingo and every way of life in Belfast. In exchange Costas from Cephalonia plied him with every parody of the great Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato as his family arrived in Belfast from Thebes. So many times, his mind was never wasted with these classroom clowns, just because his mind was built different. He even slipped into thought of Jellyfish Creatures that have survived since Jurassic with brains, according to his scientific and literary mentor the Naturalist Charles Darwin. So that gave Cillian great hope for the next generation, and whatever inventions and passage of thought evolve.

 Nevertheless, returning to class there was a crowded cluster of persons that were there to learn. Then many times for amusement, Miss Honeyhole would place Cillian on show on a soapbox and pulpit for the class to throw cities of the world at him. And he miraculously knew where everything was. “Where is Moose Jaw?” asked Molly Morelli, whose father rides with conviction the out of the ordinary three wheel ice cream bike. Cillian would then answer without hesitation, “Evolving fur trading village of Saskatchewan Canada,” then Penelope Jacobs the classroom cracker asked, “My compatriot of information Cillian Custard, Do you know where the Ring of Brodgar is?” To which Cillian faster than a rock in Space or the Earth in orbit round the Sun would acknowledge instantaneously, “It is a Neolithic Henge some six miles from Stromness and certainly not some Irish Mary bar in Sodomy Central of Cathedral Quarter Belfast.” And next their hands reaching out with bizarre curiosity to ask what is sodomy, but as he beamed in amusement Cillian tactfully decided he was not going to draw them pictures. Some of the class even thought that he had enjoyed great journeys on his bike and also by his dad’s ships to see and know these great places, but he assured them that his only travels were browsing the ordnance survey maps in the Glover Library while outside these wooden headed fools were swinging round lamp posts.

 And then away from the mountain of maps and charts of geographic areas that he knew of their ordinance from the Glover Library, these precious hearts and minds of Little Heads would sometimes test Cillian on the biography of all their Kings and Queens in time. As Cillian had somehow read every omnibus of history since the great English Strategic slaughter with the Norman Knights at the Battle of Hastings in ten sixty six. The one were Harold got it in the eye. Cillian was always happy to oblige and was indebted to Miss Honeyhole’s eternal respect, yet she tolerated his talented and intelligent power from his endless collaboration of books. While everyone else around him did not enjoy that wonder of life. But she once in fun decided to promote her authority and asked for anyone in Little Heads who thought that they were stupid, to stand up. Everyone looked around at each other, so Cillian then sensed their natural perception of fear and unease. And then Cillian Custard then stood up in both satire and sarcasm to protect them from this great social anxiety. Miss Honeyhole the god of their education, she smiled nominating both her ridicule and surprise. “Surely you are not so stupid young Cillian Custard the school Maestro. As you play to the class some cultural scholarly clown to entertain us, as you have every original intellectual advantage.” To which the reply from himself arrived, “Not quite Miss Honeyhole, I am quick. Yet the class just hates to see you standing there all on your own by your lonely singular self!” Her smile to vanish like the Roman Occupation, or the riches of the Elgin Marbles.

 There were many other moments of mental challenge he remembered in the classroom, as Cillian was always taking on Miss Honeyhole’s hold and authority on the class. But it was always funny and brilliant, and he never set out to make Miss Honeyhole look horrible or find holes in her armour. One day he was such a sarcastic antagonist, when his lesson that day was to foray into the playground and find insects to draw and describe them. And then with reference of their latin labels from the Glover Library, to strategically name them. So Cillian proudly presented this gallery of six insects that he drew with quite graphic skill and precision who so happened according to Cillian to be called Jerry, Tracy, Martin, Miranda, Steve and Fred. Well she did ask for their names, so the Know Your Insects homework was a great success if not a parody with Miss Honeyhole expecting their Greek name perspectives like Linnaeus or Coleoptera.