THE BOGEY is the true story of Naoimh, a young Irish girl who pulls an incredible stunt in London in the late 1960s – possibly the biggest and most daring heist ever in the British Isles, never reported nor persecuted. Back home, she establishes herself at the core of a tight-knit community, keeping a low profile, and never grasping the extent of her involvement in what will develop into a major IRA bombing campaign lasting for almost three decades.
Excerpts:
“In pubs and rundown shops, she holds sway over her audience, inspires awe, has her followers and grandchildren enthralled. The very young and the incredibly old, those who walked the “Dubbo cobbles” long before Naoimh, and those who will continue in her footsteps long after she’s dead and gone, all of those salt-of-the-earth denizens of a very real Ireland are ephemeral testimony to a certain set of values, spirits and stubborn Celtic warriors who shall not yield, no, never, in the face of the British, the poxy European Union, or, worse, the begrudging ghosts of the past.”
“On a far more subtle scale, the inscrutable chasms of her mind inadvertently protect her personality by means of minor deviations from a story already told in order to fill in more detail, or give another view from the one previously stated, to generally chameleonize her character, thereby providing her with ultimate cover and camouflage. Naoimh is a natural. A spy. She herself would just comment that “ye can’t con an old con”.”
“Today, everybody knows that joke about two Irish lads arriving in a foreign country, armed with sleeping bags and – a phone number. The beginning of an invasion, a tremendous influx of migrants and the rise of the Irish pub diaspora abroad. Back in 1967 things were different. The Irish were, if not entirely suspicious, slightly frowned upon, and that year was just half-way between the forming of the militant Protestant UVF and the beginning of the civil rights marches in Derry. The year before, the IRA had blown up Nelson’s pillar right in the city centre of Dublin, and Ian Paisley soared to a powerful position amongst the Loyalists, preaching against Catholics, talking like Goebbels in the dregs of World War II.”
“We all know these moments when after drifting or almost nodding off we suddenly wake up stark-raving sober and alert on hearing a particular catch word [...] Knowing Naoimh and her lengthy history of petty crime, I was wide awake and could pretty much guess what was coming. Only, I didn’t have any idea of the size of it.”
Excerpts:
“In pubs and rundown shops, she holds sway over her audience, inspires awe, has her followers and grandchildren enthralled. The very young and the incredibly old, those who walked the “Dubbo cobbles” long before Naoimh, and those who will continue in her footsteps long after she’s dead and gone, all of those salt-of-the-earth denizens of a very real Ireland are ephemeral testimony to a certain set of values, spirits and stubborn Celtic warriors who shall not yield, no, never, in the face of the British, the poxy European Union, or, worse, the begrudging ghosts of the past.”
“On a far more subtle scale, the inscrutable chasms of her mind inadvertently protect her personality by means of minor deviations from a story already told in order to fill in more detail, or give another view from the one previously stated, to generally chameleonize her character, thereby providing her with ultimate cover and camouflage. Naoimh is a natural. A spy. She herself would just comment that “ye can’t con an old con”.”
“Today, everybody knows that joke about two Irish lads arriving in a foreign country, armed with sleeping bags and – a phone number. The beginning of an invasion, a tremendous influx of migrants and the rise of the Irish pub diaspora abroad. Back in 1967 things were different. The Irish were, if not entirely suspicious, slightly frowned upon, and that year was just half-way between the forming of the militant Protestant UVF and the beginning of the civil rights marches in Derry. The year before, the IRA had blown up Nelson’s pillar right in the city centre of Dublin, and Ian Paisley soared to a powerful position amongst the Loyalists, preaching against Catholics, talking like Goebbels in the dregs of World War II.”
“We all know these moments when after drifting or almost nodding off we suddenly wake up stark-raving sober and alert on hearing a particular catch word [...] Knowing Naoimh and her lengthy history of petty crime, I was wide awake and could pretty much guess what was coming. Only, I didn’t have any idea of the size of it.”
