jslarkin

JS Larkin, is a freelance writer and political analyst with inside knowledge of Irish republicanism. His expertise in the field provides an alternative understanding, and insight into mainly, Belfast, republicanism, based on his own experiences. A role that is a helpful asset towards his writing, and helpful to those seeking to develop further clarity on those things.

Larkin, was born into the poverty of the 60’s, in the front-room of a damp-infested home in the old Pound Loney. A house alive with cockroaches and fleas, and saw the walls inside held together by decades of wallpaper. The window of the bedroom he shared was always condensated, icicles hung from the frames throughout the winters, and a sheet of ice covered the windowpane.

Like many boys the streets that were his playground soon became a battleground, and has fond memories of games shared with his childhood friends, some lost early in life, many to jail, and he treasures the friendships, camaraderie, and memories.

Larkin was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1958, and has at various points in his life, worked as a butcher, a ragstore worker, and created moulds for the De Lorean gullwing car. He also worked in Miscarriages of Justice as a P/A, for 31 years, in a role that afforded him; through his involvement, dealings, and correspondence with journalists, the media, and politicians, an insight to mechanisms that have proven useful additions to him.

He is a human rights advocate, an investigative freelance writer, and independent author who believes strongly in Ireland’s traditions, culture, and beliefs, instilled in him by his parents, both devout Catholics. He is an unapologetic nationalist, who still seeks Freedom for his country and its people, from tyrannny and tyrants, including the Irish ones.

Larkin feels fortunate to have grown up as a boy in the 1960s, and remembers those times when the streets were still lit by old gas lamps. Every shadow was a ghost, and the wail from the yard wall; the banshee crying as she combed her hair, and buried his head in the pillows to hide and drown out her sad crying sounds. He thinks a lot of those places where he played as a boy, and a bay of memories swept by the sea of his childhood and teenage years, ebb and flow onto the shore of his mind for all time.

Sometimes, he thinks, just maybe it really was the banshee crying for what was to visit the North of Ireland; the bombs and bullets, the sadness and madness, the badness and the deaths. Something, neither he or his friends ever expected, after all they were just kids.

For those who went through The Troubles in the North of Ireland, that war is not the complete story, and while some so-called experts think it is, they didn’t live there. They didn’t go through what the people who lived there went through, particularly in the 1970s, and early 80s. A time that left scars on so many people. Fact is, there was good and bad everywhere, and no one can take the high moral ground above another.

Like any writer, Larkin is keen for people to read what he writes, and knowing the journey he was to undertake would have many Tardisian moments, igniting many emotional triggers; he believed it would be worth it and began the journey to the past, the teenager, and the boy. However while it took a number of visits that opened many doors, he wasn’t really prepared for the many waves that swamped and tossed him around in that life-storm. Therefore, it is his own experiences and knowledge, things witnessed – like death, and the trauma arising from them that have been drawn upon to write The Unpatriot Game Series.

A Coming of Age tale he kept writing and re-writing, hoping that those who would eventually begin to read the series, would share it with others. However, while the series remains below the radar of those in places like Belfast, it only takes one person to see how unique and powerful it is, and he believes it will happen.

Until recently, Larkin hadn’t realised that the website, like the Book Series, are a representation of the person he has become, and that there are parts of him embedded in every blog as there is throughout The Unpatriot game Series – through the memories they hold.

Larkin acknowledges that there were times in his life when he was more confident than he is today, and whether that’s because of the bruises of time, he doesn’t know. But what he does know is that the bruises, like his memories, knowledge, and experiences; are his. That the things he witnessed, like murder, are his, and the trauma, that’s his too. Yet, that he can revisit the past and write about it, has been he believes, beneficial to understanding the PTSD, the triggers, and that nightmares are dreams pulled inside out.

While he still has mornings when he arises from bed shaken and disturbed after another restless night, he knows there are those worse of, particularly those affected by things, occurrences, during those Troubles in the North of Ireland, and can only hope they will find something helpful in The Unpatriot Game series, or the website.