Lucky to have known Brian

Brian Armstrong, who died earlier this month after a long illness, was someone whose zest for life and sense of fun made a big impression on everyone he met.
Brian became well known beyond his native Lisnaskea in recent years for his prowess as an athlete, and collected medals aplenty at the UK and World Transplant Games, following his kidney transplant in 2000. But this was just one of his many talents – these included businessman, rugby player, motorcyclist, mechanic, sailor, water-skier, builder, handyman, and pianist, to name but a few.
People often said he had “great hands”, which seems to be one of the highest compliments you can pay a Fermanagh man. It wouldn’t be exaggerating to say he had a genius for all things mechanical.
But for those who knew Brian well, it was his remarkable personality that they remember above all.
The man had positively Herculean energy levels, and a common refrain since he passed away was that he packed more into his 51 years than normal folk would if they lived to 80. Brian embraced life with an almost frightening gusto - he wasn’t so much a character, more a force of nature.
Perhaps the greatest of all his talents, however, was talking; he could chat for Ireland, and there was nothing he liked more than a good yarn. An evening out with Brian often ended up as a sort of war of attrition, and he would continue the conversation long into the night until everyone else had gone to sleep. He may well have carried on talking to himself at that point, nobody knows.
Brian was a natural storyteller, and his trademark tales were usually preceded by a huge grin and the words: “I remember the time...”
However, his lifelong affair with chewing the cud meant that he wasn’t always the easiest man to find. He could be anywhere, talking to anyone from a binman to a bishop, and one of the most common questions in the Armstrong household in Lisnaskea was: “Where’s Brian?”
The stock answer to this query was: “He went down the town – he must have run into somebody.” 
But trying to get hold of Brian was like trying to catch the wind. When you combined his love for a chinwag with an elastic attitude to time that would have baffled even Stephen Hawking, it meant that the best laid plans often had to be abandoned.
If you were going to meet up with him, there was no point trying to organise a timetable. He operated on Brian Time, a sort of parallel universe where all activity was decided on the spur of the moment and everything stopped for a chat.
And when you were with him, there was no point thinking you’d have him all to yourself – as he toured around his kingdom, you were likely to be sharing him with half the population of Lisnaskea. We were all mere guests on the Brian Armstrong Show.
He was renowned for his love of ‘big boys’ toys’ and over the years had tried his hand at motorbikes (he had eight of them in his garage at the last count), speedboats, jetskis, quads, tractors and diggers, not to mention all sorts of cars, vans and lorries. 
That brings me to when I first came to know Brian as my next door neighbour in Holywood back in 1999. My wife Chris and I were enjoying a quiet Saturday afternoon when he managed to knock out our phone line while having fun with a digger in his garden.
When the ‘Legend of the Lakes’ arrived in North Down with his wife Libby and daughters Sophie and Sarah, the local residents didn’t know what had hit them. He stood out with his laid back Fermanagh ways, and his readiness for a chat, along with his kindness and generosity.
Brian loved to talk over the fence, and many a day I nearly got hypothermia, having nipped out the back door momentarily, only to be ambushed by him. I wasn’t wrapped up, and would end up yarning in the cold with him for half an hour or more – there was no such thing as a quick hello with Brian.
He was always willing to lend a hand and he helped me, or to be more precise, I helped him, build a wooden fence in my garden. It was a case of great hands meets handless.
The weekend I spent with Brian putting up the fence is probably my best memory of him - the craic was mighty and there was no danger of him going down the town to chat to someone else. Along with his usual banter, he dispensed numerous country wisdoms such as “better lookin’ at it than lookin’ for it” when we had quite a few planks left over, and many other not so repeatable sayings.
I remember the time – the only time – that Brian and I went to the local pub together. We arrived, bought a pint, sat down briefly, and I barely saw him again for the rest of the evening. He simply went off to chat with everyone else in the place, the vast majority of whom he had never met.
Music was another of his loves, and I remember when we first stayed in Lisnaskea with him, waking up to the sound of a grand piano being beautifully played, and then being gobsmacked to discover that Brian himself was the maestro. Somehow I didn’t have him down as an expert pianist – but that was Brian, he always had a surprise up his sleeve.
Staying in the Armstrong homestead was such a joy, with family and friends regularly coming and going, especially his father Cyril and late mother Nan, who lived next door. An “open house” just like in Holywood, but this was the full-on, authentic Fermanagh experience.
And for a man who could turn his hand to anything, his readiness to lend a hand pulled countless people out of holes over the years. Brian was forever stopping to help unfortunate folk who had broken down on the road, or out on the lake - he hated to see anyone stuck, and that was the mark of a true gentleman. One of his greatest gifts was that he was so natural – there was nothing fake or put on about him; what you saw was what you got. It’s a common Fermanagh trait, but Brian had it in spades, great big shovels. He was 100 per cent himself and 100 per cent Made in Fermanagh.
Like so many others across the locality and beyond, I count myself lucky to have known this extraordinary man.