THERE’S a certain look that a British soldier holding a big gun gives when a car load of culchies from Limavady pulls up at the border.
In a time long before the advent of the internet and the Good Friday Agreement, travelling the short distance between Derry and Donegal was a precarious assignment. Huge, militarised structures flanked with British soldiers had to be negotiated at Bridgend and Culmore, while the Lenamore Road, the Ballyarnett Road and others were completely cut off by huge stone bollards and ‘dragon’s teeth’.
It’s hard to believe it’s 25 years since my boyhood friends were sitting in the back of my Da’s Citreon BX Estate. ‘R’ plates not long up, I was behind the wheel, hands at ‘ten to two’ and nervously driving up to the border with a car load of halyins en route to the Milford Inn like dogs on heat.
The young soldiers, barely our age, would ask us to screw down the window, but the over-powering smell of cheap aftershave, White Lightning cider and farts would make for a quick interview. “On you go, lads…” Clearly glad to see the back of us, we’d be waved on our way.
The soldiers negotiated, the small matter of swerving the hapless Customs man a few yards up the road would be an easier undertaking.
He’d try waving us to a halt, but we’d only ever pull in if someone yelled ‘piss stop’ from the back of the Citreon.
And after that the open road was ours, and Donegal weemin were on our minds.

Social media is much maligned. It’s too intrusive. Too all encompassing. Too more-ish. It turns teenagers into muted zombies, incapable of human interaction, sat huffed in the corner of the room with the two thumbs typing like blazes. But what cannot be denied is that Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat and WhatsApp makes the world a smaller place. News, sport, shops and holiday locations are only a click away on your swanky smartphone these days.
But best of all – it can connect people a world away.
I’m in a WhatsApp group with a select group of friends. Men that I’ve known all my life and with whom I’ve grown up with. Back when I had hair, and hope. We've shared a thousand experiences, learned to drink together and swapped ‘dirty tapes’.
Life has taken this select band of brothers down different paths and no longer are we within a few miles of Limavady Grammar School where we all first met in the mid-80s.
Work, women and wains have all made their mark. And geography too. We all now reside at many of the main cultural and heritage spots of Europe - London, Scotland, Belfast, and Muff. The WhatsApp group is called ‘Functioning Alcoholics’. The clue is in the name. We share a love of all things manly, but mainly drink. And slagging the bejesus out of one another.
For all the rights and wrongs of the European Union Referendum outcome, it certainly got folk talking about politics again.
The ‘Functioning Alcoholics’ were not immune to this new interest in current affairs either. There was much heated debate about the pros and cons, from the leave camp to the remain camp.
But what we could all agree on was our concern over the border issue, and the fear that it might put another 15 minutes onto our journey time to the Golden Grill in Letterkenny this Christmas.
One of the greatest challenges as the UK leaves the EU is the likely reinstitution of a physical border between north and south.
The border checks of the Troubles were, for many, militarised sites of fear and oppression, and the free passage from north to south that citizens and travellers now enjoy is an auspicious sign of the peace process working.
The open border is a tangible sign of the end of the Troubles.
So now comes Brexit. One of the main arguments for leaving the EU was that Britain should be able to control its own borders. Under EU law, the UK currently has to allow unlimited migration from any other EU member. In recent times Britain has seen a sharp rise in immigration from less affluent countries. The little Englanders don’t like this.
By leaving, the UK could legally restrict those flows. But, of course, any migrants in the EU could all travel freely to Ireland and hop over to the UK via Northern Ireland if they wanted. So if Britain really wants control of its borders, it will have to tighten up the Irish border.
As the lone Free Stater in the group I stand to lose the most. While I possess the hallowed Irish passport, a newly built ‘hard’ border at Muff where I live could prove to be an absolute logistical nightmare.

The middle class housing estate where I reside is inhabited almost entirely by Derry folk, or ‘blow ins’ as the locals call us. We all work in the North, or visit our wee mammies there. Imagine the queues every morning to get through Immigration to go to work, hunting out the battered old passport while trying not to look terroristy.
A quick scoot to Chill Off Licence in Culmore would be a thing of the past, never mind dropping the wains off at Hollybush School.
On Friday, Google reported a huge surge in searches related to Irish passport applications. Indeed, the day following the shock Brexit result there was a queue stretching from the Squealin Pig in Muff to the Post Office with anxious holiday-makers keen to get their passport to freedom before the new iron curtain falls down. (Or was the queue from the Post Office to the Squealin Pig?)
It’s been a hell of a few days since the referendum result, between Britain opting to sever ties with the EU mothership and the internecine Tory Party squabbling. Peter Mahon, a good friend of mine and self-confessed ‘politics junkie’ has admitted the whole protracted episode has 'felt like free-basing crack cocaine'.
There could be huge economic ramifications in this part of the country too. Could we be waving goodbye to the likes of Fujitsu and Seagate? Will the A5 and A6 roads ever be upgraded? Ryanair, of course, are throwing the dummy out of the pram too. Would this sound the death knell for City of Derry Airport?
The future now seems a little less certain. A tad more gloomy. As a father of two young children you just want them to grow up in a place with hope.
To teach them right from wrong, and when to pull daddy’s finger.
If the worst comes to the worst I will take some solace in the pair of them borrowing daddy’s car some time in the future to go to the Milford Inn or the Golden Grill with their friends.
But having to run the gauntlet of the border first…

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