This photograph was taken in 1955. This was the year I was knocked down by a small van belonging to the South of Ireland Asphalt Company. The accident happened quite near to where this photograph was taken. Can anyone guess where it is? There are a few clues in the photo to help jog your memory.

Joan Bergin who once lived with her parents and family on Lower Killala Road was recently honoured with her third Emmy Award for her work on the television series ‘The Tudors’. Joan and her team won the award for ‘outstanding costumes’ for the series. The awards took place in Los Angeles, California last weekend. Congratulations Joan from the Cabra History.Com website.

John Burke with his sister Anne

I was repeating sixth class for the second time when some of the lads came in one day with a brazier that they had found on the railway embankment and they started throwing it around the class and it got caught up on the kind of the wire struts that went across the class feeding the electricity cables into the lights. Our teacher that year was Mister Drummond. He came into the class, seen the brazier hanging out of the thing and nearly had a seizure. He rounded up the usual suspects, along with myself of course and wanted to slap us for it. I was one of the ones who he obviously didn’t like and the thing that was wrong there was that I had no hand, act or part in the brazier. I wouldn’t even touch it, I was afraid I’d get a disease from it. I didn’t know where it had been and I wouldn’t let him slap me. So we all went out of the class and we sat up in front of the gates of Dalymount and we refused to go back into school unless he accepted that I wasn’t responsible and a few others that he was blaming. We wouldn’t tell who done it but we were willing to give an undertaken that we hadn’t touched it. So eventually there was some kind of a deal worked out with Mister O’Brien the principle that we would go into another class for the rest of the time. But then we were let back into the class eventually. I think they found out who the real perpetrators were. But we got no apology.

Kathleen and Ned Burke from 41 Broombridge Road, Cabra West. Sadly Kathleen passed away yesterday 21st August 2010, age 86 years old. Kathleen was born and reared in Dublins inner city and her husband Ned Burke was a Tipperary man through and through. He died in 2002. At nineteen years of age Kathleen left Dublin to work in a munitions factory in England. After the war many people became unemployed. Kathleen remembered seeing notices outside factories saying ‘No Irish or Blacks need apply’. She later moved to Chester with her friends and then returned home to Dublin. Kathleen and Ned where married in the Pro Cathedral in 1950. They moved to Cabra West about 1951 and had eight children. Before heading off to England Kathleen worked for a family on the Cabra Road named Dunne. The family tried to stop Kathleen from moving to England without success. She was a nanny to their children and they all loved her very much. One of those children is now connected to the Cabra History.Com website and when he was home here in Dublin for the Cabra Reunion in 2009 he paid Kathleen a visit. His name is Tony Dunne and he is now living in Australia. Kathleen Burke is a younger sister to my mother Mary Coffey from Killala Road. God bless you Kathleen and the wonderful generation that you came from. You set us a very high standard to follow in the way of parenthood and community spirit.

It’s that time of year again. The whole countryside is awash with beautiful, belly-busting blackberries. All there for the taking, free of charge. No tax, no V.A.T, no surcharge, no handling fee just help yourself. My father used to take us up along the canal bank at Broombridge and on up to Ashtown picking blackberries. By the time you got halfway between one lock and the other you’d have blackberry juice all over your face never mind your mouth. We often brought large brown and cream coloured earthenware  jars with us to put the berries in. The Da’ always warned us not to pick any of the berries that were growing too near the ground because ‘the Devil spits on them ones’. It was only in later years that I discovered it wasn’t the devil spitting on them that was the problem, it was other boys p***ing on them. We’d often bring a milk bottle filled with water to drink and slices of bread with drippin’ on them for our lunch. Be Janie we’d sit on the canal lock gates and murder the bread and water. We’d be fighting over whose turn it was next to have a swig from the milk bottle. You’d see bits of bread floating on the top of the water but you didn’t care, you’d just gulp it down in case one of the brothers grabbed the bottle out of your grip. Well there’s nothing in this world that tastes quite like the Ma’s homemade blackberry jam spread over a slice of Batch Loaf. Our jam never made it into a jam jar, with fifteen kids in the house it barely made it onto the bread. Life seemed much more simple then for us kids. Homemade blackberry jam and Batch Loaf, what else could you ask for?

This lovely photograph from the 1940s shows Frances Kirwan from Drumcondra walking past the Gresham Hotel with her pal. Her father was shot in the War of Independence when Frances was only two years old. Thank you to her son Des White for submitting the photograph to the site. Des has an Uncle who was married in Christ the King Church in 1940.

Here’s a nice photograph of Shay Jordan outside his old school, St Peter’s in Phibsborough. (Who is your man asleep in the blue car?) Shay recently returned home to Dublin on holiday to visit family, friends and old haunts. One of those old haunts was the school from his boyhood days where Shay spent some of the best years of his life. The upstairs windows is the classroom where Shay was educated. Isn’t it a strange thing all the same to find yourself as an adult returning to your old school? So many lads I knew in Finbars School in Cabra West were only too glad to get away from it. Personally, I had a great time in school and loved every minute of it, well except maybe when I got the odd slap or two or three or more. My seven year old nephew can’t understand why a teacher would want to slap you. Times have certainly changed. Anyway a big thank you to Shay for sending in the photograph.

Angela & Eugene Rooney were recently spotted in the Phibsborough area while home on holiday. What a handsome couple!!!

My mother had sent my brother and I on the 22 bus across the city to Dolphins Barn. Billy Quinn from Swilly Road had opened his first butchers shop next door to the Picture House there. Before moving to Swilly Road the Quinn’s had lived next door to our family. Billy Quinn had told my mother to send one of the boys over to the shop and he’d ‘look after her’. So off went myself and my brother Brendan with a shopping list for sausages, rashers and whatever else was on offer. Having done our shopping we headed back for the bus home. The bus sauntered along the South Circular Road as Brendan and I sat upstairs with all the smokers. There were a few lads about our age of 12 – 14 years old sitting behind us. They were talking about a new band that they had heard on the wireless the night before. ’199 Radio Caroline, the station that serves the nation’. Brendan and I sat there munching a mouthful of Cleeves and earwigging in on the lads conversation. They were arguing about the names of the band members that they were so keen on hearing again. One fella threw out a name and one of the others told him he was wrong and so it went on until the bus turned into Camden Street. It was then that my brother Brendan turned around in his seat and glaring at the lads behind us said” It’s John, Paul, George and Ringo and they’re called the Beatles”. Brendan sat back in his seat as the lads behind us went all quiet. He then looked at me and I said ‘who are the Beatles”? With disgust he turned away and looked out of the bus window for the remainder of the journey home to Cabra West. That was my first official introductin to the Fab Four…the Beatles.

I recently took a stroll along the banks of the Royal Canal in Cabra West from Broombridge to Reilly’s Bridge with my new fandangled handycam camcorder. I was pleasantly surprised at what I caught on the camera in the way of wildlife. To share this with you I have uploaded the piece from youtube onto this site and named it Cabra West Canal Walk. Because I was holding the camera in my hands it has a bit of a shake in it as I walking along. But stick with it and it’ll hopefully improve. Have a look and see what you think…check it out in Video Corner.