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The Jagged Halo
by Patrick Bentley
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 13th August 2010
ISBN: 978-1-907179-85-3
Price: €15.00
Patrick Bentley has been to hell and back. In this book he pulls no punches in telling us about the underbelly of Irish life.
This is the story of an abused child struggling for normality in the town of Skerries in the early 70’s. It’s about an early life of crime that led to being locked up in a reform school run by the Christian Brothers, leading to abuse, fear, isolation and no sense of identity.
It’s about a teen finding a place to hide in the voice and music of Gary Numan … a search for a soul mate, leading to forbidden love … to Jesus …
A journey through the world of drugs and beyond to the painful story of the Jagged Halo.
Extract from The Jagged Halo
As the clouds of winter faded into the history books, the summer of 1986 dawned with open blue skies and bright sunshine. I was filled with new hopes and new dreams going into that summer. I thought my dark, painful past was well and truly behind me at last, and the hopes of keeping my new clean-living lifestyle intact was something I kept a firm grip on, no matter what came my way. I kept very much to myself and worked away picking winkles on the seafront shores looking out across at the islands that sat in the open seas a short mile’s walk from the surrounding south beaches of Skerries town.
I relished the simplicity of my new-found life and its daily routine of picking for four or five hours, then returning home by bike to Balbriggan with my brother Alex. We were not the only ones who picked the shores that summer. There were a couple of other guys and a group of girls who took up picking there during the summer holidays from school. I never took much pass on anyone at the time. I’d come from a dark existence and had been training my mind to focus only on work and on keeping within the safe boundaries of what felt right for me. So, in a sense, I had withdrawn very much into myself.
