PROC is 12

26th Sep 2012

On this day twelve years ago the revolution to create an independent sovereign Cork state began.

Aright like, we haven’t got too far beyond setting up a website, going to matches and drinking an enormous amount of Cork stout, which admittedly all have varying levels of relevance to the dynamic whirlwind of revolution we first envisaged, but in fairness in terms of actually achieving our goals we’re no worse than any of the angry fringe political movements currently threatening similar fanciful notions -  even though the same fourteen people, three kids and two dogs keep turning up to their heavily blinkered meetings in Cork hotels.
 

Nearly a teen. PROC might score with an old doll for the first time soon and find hairs in funny places.

We’re still here anyway and at twelve years old we’re at the website equivalent of making our confirmation so if you’d like us to call out to your gaf for a visit in our Sunday clothes please have a glass of tanora, a packet of cheese and onion Taytos and an envelope ready with some notes in it.

Being just twelve we’re shy as well so keep the questions to a minimum and just talk to our mam about adult things like the weather and the cut backs while we wait for the day to be over so we can go home and plan spending the dosh.

Top Ten Things that make us feel old to be twelve because when PROC was set up in the year 2000:

1. We paid for the website name in punts.

2. We had to borrow someone’s mam’s credit card to do it (this was long before the banks were lashing them out to children and their pets).

3. None of us owned a mobile phone.

4. The dot com bust hadn’t happened yet (we had nothin’ to do with it we swear!)

5. The website was first seen on Windows 95 which meant screen pixels were about the size of your thumb nail. 

Beamish chocolate with tanora flavoured cream inside

6. Rochestown was still considered posh because they hadn’t fully built Mount Oval.

7. Sir Henry's was still banging it out and not a car park.

8. Nerd alert: there were no content management systems and the site was entirely HTML based so each page’s code had to be edited individually. Some dose.

9. Bertie Ahern wasn’t considered to be a complete langer.

10. The main drainage scheme didn’t exist and everyone’s toilet (ergo bowel) was connected directly to the river.

Henry's: thankfully it closed before Facebook started.

Now skipping merrily into our teens with confirmation money in hand we will probably be struck down by the pangs of unwelcome teenage growth. Tall, skinny and gangly we will stand awkwardly in cyberspace for a few years, grunting out moody sentences and huffing about how awful everything is – except anything to do with Cork obviously.

 

Jahmemburum? We used these things to register our website address

There’ll probably be a phase where we can only reply to questions with really bad and annoying sarcasm - a strange period of our website’s life that will be the equivalent of discovering peculiar things happening to our bodies and finding hairs in funny places – maybe we’ll find a virus or Trojan in the deep dark folders of our gallant, but sometimes moody, internet server ‘Finbarr the Second’. Some quiet experimenting in private will figure it out.

This party will be the dogs bollocks

Will there be a party we hear you say?

We definitely want to coz the other kids in our class would mock us if we didn’t, but because we are only twelve we have to ask our mam if we are allowed. Last year, Leary and Sully poured Tanora into the old man’s brandy bottle for the laugh and Eddie Stone Brain broke the landing window with a football.

Dear Jeezuss, pleez gimme loadzamoneee for me confah coz Ill really need it when Im turt-een

So if you get an invite you’ll have to ask your old lade to come along as well especially if our mam says we have to do bowling and quasar and not a party in our gaf. Some damage you can do with those bowling balls when nobody’s looking! And let’s be honest, we’ve all tried to lob a bowling ball across a few redundant ten-pin lanes a few times and found it to be fierce and unexpected craic. Haven’t we?! …yeah, you’ll need to bring your mams.

Chicken nuggets and chips all round afterwards and loads of fizzy drinks to make us go proper mental.

Our birthday is being celebrated all around the world

Seriously, here, there, lah: Thanks to all our readers, writers, designers, programmers, t-shirt wearer, sponsors and supporters over the last three Olympics and World Cups or so.

It’s probably cool to shout something inspiring now to the masses expecting a revolution or the imminent expulsion of Dublin forces from Cork so here goes: The revolution will not be televised - because we haven’t switched over to digital yet and there’s something wrong with Sully’s video camera anyway. Plus, we’re kinda busy with other stuff so we mightn’t get around to it for a while. You know yourself like.

Up the Rebels, though.