But there was a good side, and beautiful it truly was. As for many a moon, Cillian and his brain dead Dad Fred 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 did the father and son bit, yet talking about his boats was as boring as Louis Braille in an art gallery. 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.
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.
And here 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 the 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.’