Category: Dublin (Page 3 of 4)

An Interesting Day…copyright, muffins and free pens!

6th March 2009 / Abigail / 0 Comments

The Dublin Book Festival kicked off today in the City Hall in Dublin city centre. It’s the second year of the event and, since I had the day free I dragged the husband along.

When we arrived at the City Hall there was a pleasant buzz. Hoards of school children trooped in and out to meet various authors and people were sitting around reading books they had picked up from the well stocked publishers’ shelves dotted around the main hall.

There’s a coffee shop and loads of stalls around the hall…I would highly recommend the free pen but to be frank, any opportunity to feed my stationary habit gives me a warm glow inside (yes, I know I probably need to get out more).

Sitting over a coffee and a muffin it was great to the hall buzzing with people, even without the festival getting as much publicity as it could have got. As a country renowned for our writers, we are sometimes not very good at celebrating the fact and I’ve often grouched about the lack of festivals where a writer or wannabe writer could pitch up and learn something.

Today I had my eye on a seminar on copyright issues. It might not be the sexiest topic under the sun but if you’re a writer of any kind it’s kind of a big one. The last time I had actually sat down and listened to a talk on the subject I was in college and we were being told about the tendency of certain nefarious editors who would use our copy willie nillie especially on this new fangled Internet thing (it was quite a while ago). The issue had got considerably more complex since then!

As I said it’s been a while since I’ve actually sat down and listened to anything about copyright. It’s a day to day part of life nowadays but it’s only when listening to the information in one go that you realise how many assumptions you make and how many gaps there are in your knowledge. It’s an important issue but one that it’s easy to gloss over and assume you know everything there is to know.

So the talk from the Irish Copyright Licencing Agency was fascinating. It covered the basics of copyright law as well as Creative Commons, PLR and the Google Book Settlement. It’s great to get a basic overview of stuff like that.

I’ve had copyright drummed into me from the very first steps I took into journalism. It’s a complex topic but one any writer needs to know their way around.

I’ll be heading back in tomorrow – there’s a discussion at 1.30 on the future of Irish publishing (again rather pertinent). I’d highly recommend a trip in to see what’s on offer. Events like this deserve to get all the support they can get.

On the Lack of Flea Markets in Dublin…

18th January 2009 / Abigail / 3 Comments

I was wandering around town yesterday, past the Cornucopia Restaurant (which reminds me, I haven’t been there in years, I wonder why) when a poster on the wall caught my eye.

I stopped in my tracks…could it be? Was it possible that at long last there was a flea market in Dublin again? Stopping in my tracks I wandered over to take a close look at the poster and saw that, yes indeed, there was a flea market in Dublin again and, even better than that, it will be on next Sunday.

When I got home I checked the website given on the poster and discovered that this was not to be an isolated event but will be happening every month – and I’d already missed the first two.

I should probably explain at this point why I get so excited about the prospect of rooting around other people’s discarded junk. Actually maybe this isn’t quite the time for that, I’m not going into my squirelling tendencies in a public forum like this! But seriously, I’ve often lamented the lack of flea markets in modern Dublin.

When I first moved here, in the early 90s there were several, scattered around the city centre. Mother Redcaps, The Dandelion, The Blackberry Fair were all favourite haunts and the source of most of my interior design in those impoverished days.

The Blackberry Fair in particular was where I found the 60s kitch cream cube of a tv that might have only been a black and white but for the 20 old Irish pounds I paid for it was all I could afford. It still works a treat by the way and with it’s rounded corners and polarising clip on screen is a little design classic that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a set from the Avengers or The Prisoner.

You could get anything there, from beanbags to 8-tracks to strange twisted bits of metal that could have been used for just about anything. I remember buying a massive ppine chest of drawers with a serious list to one side that I always meant to sand down and renovate but never got round to it.

Most people I knew in those days would have been advocates of what’s now known as shabby chic. It wasn’t because it was trendy back then, it was because it was cheap and quirky and there was always treasure to be found amongst the junk.

Going to a market at the weekend was a foraging mission like no other. You might have an idea what you were looking for but in the end you could literally come home with anything. Even looking around my living room now I can see a couple of vases and a 70s wooden lamp that were market finds.

I used to come home with bizarre finds – an antelope horn mounted in silver, oil lamps, a replacement lid for an old slow cooker. Not to mention the fantastic vintage clothes finds…

The problem was that when Dublin got rich the markets closed down one by one. The Dandelion was the first to go, followed a couple of years later by Mother Redcaps, there so long it was a Dublin institution. They closed because people had stopped coming and people were so busy with the bright shiny things they could now afford that they didn’t even mark their passing.

By the time the Blackberry Fair closed down nobody even murmured.

We had become too grand to root around in bric a brac. We didn’t want it if it wasn’t new and preferably designer. We’d go to markets if they sold organic vegetables or expensive crafts but the true flea market was just too messy and cheap to satisfy us anymore.

True, in recent years, websites like Freecycle and Jumbletown have sprung up to allow unwanted items to find a home but it’s not really the same.

There’s nothing quite like wandering around a collection of stalls with a steaming cup of tea in a polystyrene cup searching for overlooked treasure. Maybe it’s my seventies upbringing showing through but I’ve always loved renovating and customising and making do. I’m the kind of person that can’t walk past a skip without having a look.

But the markets that Dublin used to have suited the city. To be honest I think I prefer the somewhat grimier Dublin from those days. You could always get the designer stuff if you wanted it, Brown Thomas is hardly a new addition, but you had the rest as well.

Now as we head back into economic blackness the penny is beginning to drop that maybe we threw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s all very well having the luxury but if you don’t have the money you need to be able to get hold of the junk and get creative. These days there doesn’t seem to be much choice, it’s luxury or nothing in most places.

I’ll be going to the Dublin Flea Market next Sunday and I urge you to as well. Maybe if this one really takes off Dublin can see it’s markets flourish again and we can be skint with a bit more grace, after all these days, thanks to shows like Bargain Hunt on the BBC, everyone know you never know what you’re going to find among the jumble.

Christmas Windows and Travel Plans…

30th November 2008 / Abigail / 0 Comments

I’m off to Ennis tomorrow as part of the Devil in the Red Dress push…more book signing and interviews in a quick round trip. Last time I was there I was researching the book, this time it’s published and on the shelves.

There’s less pressure this time round but it’s still a busy enough schedule…why the train trip needs two changes I will never understand! Plenty of people want to go to Ennis, why do they make it so awkward to get there?

Still I’m looking forward to it. It’s a pretty little town, not to mention the fact it’s the setting for my action…I’m also taking the opportunity to catch up with some friends so it’ll be fun.

In between interviews this week I’ve been trying to make some headway into the whole Christmas palaver. The Christmas windows have been up for the last couple of weeks and as usual they’re light years away from the fairytale visions that used to make a trip in to go Christmas shopping so much fun years ago. It’s something that bugs me every year.

Back then you could go and look at the windows for Brown Thomas, Clerys or the Daddy of them all, Switzers and see moving puppets telling a Christmas story. These days it’s all about making a stylish buck. The shop owners won’t give the hard sell a rest for a couple of weeks during a season when people will always go shopping regardless.

It all changed several years ago when Switzers closed down and Brown Thomas took over. The Switzers window used to be famous. It would be unveiled without much pomp at around the same time as the Christmas lights went up on Grafton Street.

First look would always be at night. I can remember stopping on my way home from a night out when I was in my twenties and the window was there in all it’s glory. There were a few of us there and we all stopped and listened to the Christmas tunes belting out across the icy street and walked slowly along the length of the shop watching the animated story unfold in each successive window.

There were dozens of people there by the time we got to the last window. Everyone was smiling and talking and laughing and it was suddenly just that little bit closer to Christmas and a little bit of cynicism had melted away.

Those days are long gone now though. In these times of economic uncertainty I notice that even the more ornate displays carry price tags (once banished for the festive period). Arnotts on Henry St has probably made the best effort with a miniature city glowing around the designer clad dummies.

Brown Thomas, where the Switzers windows used to be is this year just a celebration of consumerism. Maybe I’m being needlessly nostalgic but I think it’s sad that those windows are consigned to an Ireland long gone. The Celtic Tiger has died or is at least in serious decline, it would have been nice to see shop owners do something just for the fun of it…something to make the kids happy and make it seem a little more like Christmas.

A gesture like that might even encourage more people into their shops than dangling shiny goods in front of their noses that will just put more strain on the credit card.

Now ok, this Christmas I’d rather people concentrated on buying books (I have a vested interest after all) but I miss the Christmas windows and I’d like to see them back! Who’s with me?

An Interesting Conversation

28th November 2008 / Abigail / 0 Comments

I had an interesting conversation last night. I had been out with friends at the Mont Clare Hotel on Merrion Square in Dublin but had to do a radio interview with Near FM. The folks at reception very kindly allowed me to take the call at the porters desk and everything went off swimmingly.

I was talking for around half an hour…I don’t think I let Pat, the presenter much of a look in, but Devil got a good plug.

It was only afterwards when I got talking to the girl on reception that another trial I have talked about here came up. No matter what I talk about, the Finn Colclough trial keeps coming back into the frame.

Anyway it turned out that she had known the victim in that trial, Sean Nolan. Obviously covering a high profile trial where there are a lot of press, there’s not really an opportunity to talk to the people involved…not that they’d want to anyway while the trial is going on.

We were talking about the trial and the eventual manslaughter verdict. It was interesting to talk to someone with a personal involvement. It’s easy to be too glib about these things when you cover them as a news story. If we didn’t have the remove we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs but it does mean you can have too much of a remove sometimes.

I can totally understand how hard it was for the Nolan family to accept the manslaughter verdict. Even if I might think myself that, given the evidence in the trial it was probably the only verdict the jury were likely to return, for them it’s never going to be any less raw than it was the day they heard the news.

I can’t imagine how any mother could deal with the loss that Charlotte Nolan has had to deal with, the loss of her younger son on the night he finished secondary school. That’s something you can never forget and that will never get any easier to come to terms with.

It’s always interesting to meet someone who’s been personally touched by a story I’ve written about. Because no matter how much I might empathise, no matter how much compassion I might have the the victim or the accused, I’m always going to be at a remove, standing on the outside of the case observing it as it unfolds.

That’s just the nature of the job, but I can understand that others see the remove as unnatural or perverse in some way. I might want to understand, to feel something to understand it better, but that will always be from a writer’s point of view and that means being on the outside.

I can see by the number of people who read my coverage of the Colclough trial, how raw a nerve this trial has struck. It’s understandable, even if I might sometimes wish that more came looking for the book than for Finn Colclough and Sean Nolan. There was something about that trial that made it different, it’s rare to see such a stark tragedy even amongst the daily litany of tragedies that makes up the day to day business of the Central Criminal Court.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be blogging next week. I’m off down to Ennis again at the start of the week and I might be out of coverage. More signings and interviews though…the book needs to be sold!

Two Nights Out, Two Very Different Crimes.

23rd November 2008 / Abigail / 4 Comments

On Friday, Dane Pearse was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence for the murder of Google employee Mark Spellman. During the two week trial the jury heard that Mr Spellman was returning home from a night out when he was fatally stabbed by Pearse.

Most of the press who sat through the trial had remarked at some point about the similarities between the Pearse trial and the one of Finn Colclough some weeks before. In both cases a young man out for an evening of celebration met their death when a chance encounter played out to a tragic ending.

But these two trials had very different outcomes. Pearse was convicted of murder after the jury heard that he had returned armed with a decorative knife after Mr Spellman had kicked him to the ground in an earlier meeting. Colclough on the other hand was convicted of manslaughter after the jury in his trial heard that he had come out of his house holding a knife in each hand and Sean Nolan, the deceased, had confronted him taking up to four steps towards him

Sean Nolan died after celebrating completing his secondary education. Mark Spellman was heading home with friends after a night out intending to spend the rest of the evening playing Playstation games. Both were in high spirits. Neither young man deserved to lose their lives.

But despite the similarities between the two crimes there are some very definite differences, differences that led to the two differing sentences. Both cases had a whiff of the traditional north/south Dublin rivalry. Colclough was from the exclusive Waterloo Road, Nolan from the more working class Fairview on the north of the city.

In the more recent trial the locations were reversed (although this time both south of the Liffey). Pearce grew up in working class Islandbridge while Spellman hailed from the salubrious coastal suburb of Dalkey.

But in both trials the old geographical and social preconceptions were less important that they might have seemed at first. Both trials had their own peculiarities that guided the juries to their different verdicts.

In the earlier trial of Finn Colclough we heard the story of the tragic meeting between Nolan, on a 4am search for a girl he knew, and Colclough, who suffered from OCD and heightened nervous responses. Tragically, Nolan’s response to square up to Colclough’s frantic attempt to scare him off led to his untimely death.

Pearse’s story was different. He encountered Spellman for the first time when Spellman called out to him and his girlfriend as they ran down the road. By most accounts Spellman was simply fooling around as he had been doing all the way home. However things developed, there was a confrontation and Pearse ended up tipped over onto his backside when Spellman stuck out his foot at chest height in an approximation of a karate kick.

Pearse denied that hurt pride was his motive but it didn’t take him long to run back home and grab a souvenir bat and an ornamental knife from his bedroom. After a brief struggle Spellman lay dying in a neighbour’s garden.

Both Sean Nolan and Mark Spellman had received two stab wounds when they died but their post mortems revealed very different stories. Nolan had only two wounds, on either side of his body. One had cut through his lung and sliced his heart, killing him within the hour. The wounds were consistent with simultaneous strikes and their were no tell tale defensive wounds indicating a lightening fast exchange.

Spellman’s body on the told a different story. Both major stab marks could have been fatal. One came from the front and the other had entered his back. He had defensive cuts on his hands and forearms, the signs of a struggle for possession of the knife.

After the verdict had been announced on Sunday, Mark Spellman’s little sister Emma told the court in her victim impact statement that she had lost her “goofy” brother and that at his death “a little piece of all of us died too.”

Over the weekend Dane Pearse started his life sentence. Finn Colclough will have to wait until December to learn how long he will serve in prison. The two cases might have a superficial similarity but a closer look shows the differences. For the Spellman and Nolan families on the other hand, the outcome was the same. They have both lost a part of them and will have to live with the effects of those two night’s out for ever.

An Emotional Day

12th November 2008 / Abigail / 0 Comments

The family of Mark Spellman sobbed quietly as they listened again and again to accounts of the horrific wounds he received in an altercation with Dane Pearse. Pearse himself hung his head and looked at his hands as the court heard accounts of a fight with a tragic ending that broke out in the small hours of August 4th last year.

His defence counsel Diarmaid McGuinness fiercely cross examined Spellman’s friends about what happened to lead to the altercation. We heard that the night had started well. Mr Spellman had been out with friends from Google where he worked. One of them, Finbar O’Mahony was leaving to go travelling and by all accounts it was a good night.

Mark, Finbar and another friend Oisin Hoctor decided to go back to Mark’s flat in Sandymounth to have a few more drinks and spend the rest of the night playing on his Playstation. His two friends told the court that the three of them were in high spirits, fooling around and joking as they slowly made their way towards Sandymount.

Hoctor bowed his head and laughed to himself as he heard O’Mahony describe tipping Mark over a low wall they were sitting on. The deceased man had been in good form that night both men told the court. Stopping off at a Spar shop on the way, Mark opened the back door of a parking car and made to get in, once again fooling around.

But the testimony rapidly took a darker turn. O’Mahony told the court he had seen Pearse stab his friend in the side. Pearse denies the murder of Mark Spellman but his defense counsel have acknowledged that he went back to his house and came back out armed with a bat and an ornamental dagger he had in his bedroom. It was this knife that inflicted the fatal injuries.

Lola Simpson, in whose garden Mark had lain dying, painted a vivid picture of a terrifying encounter, overheard from her bedroom above. She described how she had been woken that night by people talking loudly as they passed by the house. She was lying awake in her bed, she said when she heard some more people approaching.

It was just “chitter chatter” she said, “quiet conversation.” They didn’t have local accents. She thought that some had been from the country and one voice was “very refined”. She listened to them pass and settled back down to sleep.

Then she heard screaming and the sounds of panic. She smiled nervously as she asked was it acceptable to say the words she had heard in court. “You are not allowed to censor the evidence.” Mr Justice Paul Carney told her from the lofty height of his bench.

Her garden gate, stiff at the best of times was slammed open with great force. Then she heard someone running. “It was very frightening running, a stampede towards my front door.”

She said she heard a shout, like a howl, which made her jump out of bed and rush to the window. Peeping out of the shutters she could see someone lying in the long grass at the end of the garden. She hurried downstairs, stopping only to put on her slippers and dressing gown and went outside.

There she found Oisin Hoctor bending over his stricken friend. He was trying to lift him up. “He got him up on his feet. He just melted. He melted between the guys hands onto the ground.” Her voice breaking with emotion she described the wound she could now see in Mark Spellman’s side. Mark’s family wept openly as she described a gaping wound, with his intestines showing through.

Finbar O’Mahony told the court that he had his phone in his hand when Dane Pearse walked by him out of the garden a short time before Mrs Simpson came out. He said Pearse had blood on his sleeve and turned towards him as he walked away with the girl in a white dress he may or may not have been arguing with a short time earlier. “You’d better get an ambulance for your friend,” he said calmly, according to O’Mahony’s recollection.

Another Night Out that Ended in Tragedy

11th November 2008 / Abigail / 0 Comments

The trial of Dane Pearse started today. The 21-year old, from Londonbridge Drive in Islandbridge in Dublin 4, is accused of the murder of Mark Spellman (26) who died from stab wounds after an altercation on an August night last year. He denies the charge.

Today we heard evidence from one of Mr Spellman’s friends, Oisin Hoctor, who told the court that he and Mr Spellman had been at a leaving do for a colleague of theirs from the Google offices in Dublin.

The evening had started out pleasantly enough, he said, with him enjoying a couple of pints in the beer garden of the Beggars Bush pub on Haddington Road. He was joined by Mr Spellman and his girlfriend and eventually, after a couple more pints they moved on the the leaving party which was being held at the 51 pub nearby.

At the end of the night, Mr Hoctor, Mr Spellman and another friend headed off. There had been the suggestion of a party and Mr Hoctor told the court he was hoping to persuade Mr Spellman to go to that as the three of them walked along to a nearby Spar shop.

But the lure of video games and drink in the comfort of Mr Spellman’s Sandymount apartment was too enticing and a plan was reached. They bought provisions; Pringles and some Coke for mixers, before starting the walk back.

Mr Hoctor described a normal enough night out. He and his friend were fooling around, he said, and Mr Spellman was walking ahead trying to speed them up as the going was slow that night. He said he had run home to fetch a bottle of vodka he remembered having and caught up the other two at a bridge crossing the Dodder.

He actually got there first, the others had slowed down again and took their time reaching him, he told the court. But the evening that had started out so pleasantly was to have a tragic ending.

Mr Hoctor said he had barely noticed the couple walking ahead. He and his friend were talking and didn’t notice that Mr Spellman had widened the gap between them. He said he could hear some kind of shouting up ahead but didn’t think much of it.

When Mr Spellman reached Londonbridge Road, the corner of Londonbridge Drive to be exact, he stopped. Mr Hoctor said he couldn’t see who he was talking to but told the court he and his friend speeded up because they knew Mr Spellman had got involved with something that wasn’t his business.

They arrived to see Mr Spellman talking to a man and a woman. Mr Hoctor said the couple were both shouting and acting aggressively and he heard Mr Spellman say “Calm down, Buddy”. He thought he was calling the man “Dave”.

Things escalated and Mr Hoctor told the jury that he saw the man run at Mr Spellman, who raised his foot and connected with the man’s chest. The man ended up on his arse but seemed to calm down a bit.

There were more words and the two sides separated. Mr Hoctor said they were laughing about the incident but he didn’t remember Mr Spellman explaining exactly what had happened.

A short time later they heard running footsteps and Mr Hoctor said he recognised the same man running towards them. He said the man was holding what looked like two weapons one in each hand and was running straight at Mr Spellman.

The force with which they connected was enough to carry them into the middle of the garden of one of the nearby houses.Mr Hoctor told the court that he was panicking and couldn’t get the garden gate open. It must have taken him several seconds and when he did get it open the man ran past him, away down Londonbridge Drive.

Mr Hoctor fought back tears as he described finding his friend in the darkness of the garden. He saw a “shininess” in the light from the street lights and found a knife, he estimated to be about 8″ long. He could see blood on the blade.

He swallowed as he described pulling Mr Spellman into the light so he could see how badly he was injured. The court was quiet, apart from the sobs from Mr Spellman’s family, as he described seeing a knife wound on Mr Spellman’s right side. He said he knew it was bad as he could see what he thought were intestines sticking out.

In the prosecution opening speech this morning we heard that two ambulances were called that night for both the deceased and the accused, who had returned home wounded. We heard that Mark Spellman was pronounced dead at 3.25 that morning, August 4th.

The trial is expected to last until sometime in the middle or end of next week. But once again, there are two families for who the events of that night will last much longer than that.

An Expected Verdict

1st November 2008 / Abigail / 5 Comments

After just under four hours of deliberations the jury in the Finn Colclough trial have handed in their verdict.

The courtroom was silent as the registrar took the issue paper from the young female foreman. The tension in the room was palpable. Several members of Sean Nolan’s family started to sob silently even before the jury had taken their seats.

The Colclough camp was silent, sitting straighter as the registrar unfolded the yellow paper. Finn himself sat as he had sat throughout the trial, head down and staring at his hands. His mother Alix gripped the back of his seat and stared straight ahead while his father Michael sat impassively.

“The jury find the accused, Finn Colclough not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.”

There was silence in the court. As the judge completed the formalities the two families sat wrapped up in their own thoughts. The only overt emotion was from Finn’s young friends when they heard he would be spending the weeks until his sentence on December 19th behind bars.

The Nolan family sat quietly. Even his mother Charlotte, who had seemed so close to tears on many occasion during the trial, was dry eyed at the verdict.

Once Mr Justice Paul Carney climbed down from his high seat everyone stood around quietly. It was almost eerily calm. The various groups stood around without talking, there was a strange deference in the room.

As usual in these circumstances the press were waiting around to see if anyone would speak to us. At the midpoint of a Friday afternoon the normally buzzing Round Hall had the leaden calm of a funeral home as people broke off into small groups or wiped away silent tears. Neither side had any cause to celebrate. Neither had got the result they had secretly hoped for.

Even the traditional gathering outside the Four Courts was a muted affair. No one really expected anyone to speak to the press, after all, it will now be almost Christmas before the story has a resolution and it makes more sense to issue a statement when the story has an end of sorts.

But what was extraordinary was the way, when the Nolan family came through the gates of the courts onto the Quays the only sound was the muted clacking of the cameras as photographers stood and took their passing shots and the reporters stood in a mute group, microphones pointed down waiting as the family hurried past them. No-one stepped forward, no-one tried to speak as if this was a scene that ultimately we simply did not have a say in at this time.

Later, stopping off for an end of work pint after a bitch of a week, I watched Finn being led away from jail on the RTE evening news. Looking still so young, even though he is now branded a killer in the eyes of the law, he was shown being marched in handcuffs towards the waiting prison van. His walk seemed to take forever and it was noticeable that the route he was brought was neither the shortest nor the most secluded open to his guards.

It’s been a stressful day but my week I’m sure is nothing compared to the pain both families have and will suffer as a result of this terrible tragedy.

From now on it’s back to my favourite blonde and her Egyptian nemesis as I get ready for the Sharon Collins and Essam Eid sentence on Monday. It’ll be a weekend chained to the computer but it’s necessary. It’ll almost be a relief to deal with older subjects next week. The story of Finn Colclough and Sean Nolan was a horrible, tragic mess that could only leave a bad taste and a sad memory.

The Jury’s Out

31st October 2008 / Abigail / 0 Comments

The waiting has started. After a five day trial the jury in the Finn Colclough trial have begun their deliberations.

To a tense courtroom the two sides made their closing speeches. Prosecuting counsel Mary Ellen Ring told the jury that they should come back with a verdict of murder. She told them that Finn had a plan when he grabbed two knives from the kitchen in his home and ran outside screaming at Sean Nolan and his friends to “get the fuck away from my house”.

He could have dropped the knives, she said, when Sean came up to him demanding to know what he intended to do. He didn’t so the decision, even if made in a split second, had been made.

Patrick Gageby, for the defence, had a different take on things completely. The Nolan family shook their heads as he made his case that what had happened was an accident, provoked, at least in part by Sean’s foolhardy move.

As he made his speech Finn’s family listened intently. His older brother Sean resting his head on his hands in the public seats as his brother’s case was argued. Mr Gageby told the jury that the evidence they had heard from Dr Paul O’Connell showed that Finn had a condition that meant he had a particularly strong fear response. He said that what had happened was a young man acting irrationally, as some young men are wont to do, but that made a terrible accident, not a murder.

As Mr Justice Paul Carney summed up the evidence they had heard Charlotte, Sean’s mother, shook her head as she listened once again to the evidence given by Finn’s two young friends who had been there that night. When she heard her son described as aggressive and swearing when he asked for directions to the house of a girl called Saffy.

She looked at her husband Michael shaking her head and dipped her head towards him as he shook his head back. Then for the first time she heard the evidence of State Pathologist Marie Cassidy as that too was reviewed.

They’ve been out for almost two hours now and will be spending the night in a hotel so we’re back again tomorrow. For one family there will be bad news tomorrow whatever the verdict comes back. But in a trial like this there are only losers.

A Very Public Private Tragedy

24th October 2008 / Abigail / 0 Comments

The courtroom has been very full this week as we follow the trial of Finn Colclough, who’s accused of the murder of Sean Nolan.

The deceased was only 18 when he died, celebrating the start of the rest of his life as he left secondary school behind him. The accused was even younger, a student at the College of Further Education on Leeson Street in Dublin, at 17 too young to be named when he was arrested after the events of that night. We can only name him now because he’s had a birthday in between

Unsurprisingly, when the trial concerns people so young, the families on both sides have attended in force. Sean Nolan’s mother Charlotte sits on a bench behind the barristers with other members of the family, her face a mask of raw grief as she listens again and again to her son’s final moments. From time to time she stars bleakly at the other family sitting at right angles to her.

The mother of the accused, cookery teacher Alix Gardner, sits behind her son, starring straight ahead of her avoiding the curious glances of the press, forced through lack of space to share the bench facing the jury that is the customary seat for the accused.

The three rows of raked public seating at the back of the court are full and there’s a press of bodies to the side spreading back to the doors. These seats often fill up in the case of a trial that’s been in the news a lot, filled with curious passers-by and tricoteuses, but this time they’re filled with the pale young faces of the friends of both the accused and the deceased.

Every morning the Round Hall is filled with youngsters in their teens and early twenties, bunched in quiet groups waiting to take their seats in Court 1 to see this thing to it’s conclusion. Some of them we have heard from, telling the tale of an ordinary Friday night out that took a horribly dark turn in a matter of seconds, the others are here in silent support of the two families.

They sit politely with the other family of friends who’ve come to lend their support and the courtroom is packed. The posse of pensioners who attend every high profile murder have been banished to the upper gallery much to their dismay.

The press have begun to come down in force, colour writers joining the usual suspects of court and crime correspondents. We bunch together taking our notes, laughing at daft jokes on what is just another day on the job. It might be gallows humour but it still jars with the desperation that hangs in the air.

It’s harder to shake off a trial where the loss was so great. Sean Nolan should be a student by now, Finn Colclough should be about to start the same journey. Instead one is dead and the other is facing an uncertain future.

For the families and friends the events of that night will never be forgotten. For the press it’ll soon be just another story – but there was considerable relief when it was announced our bank holiday weekend would last till Tuesday afternoon. A welcome break for us though it’s unlikely to be felt as such by the Nolan and the Colclough families.

The Books

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