Feb 04 2016
‘A rub and a scrub…’
‘I have a vague recollection of sitting in our Belfast Sink on a Saturday night when I was about three years of age. I remember one of the older sisters standing at the sink and pulling the hell out of my ear as she poked the inside of it with the corner of a piece of bed sheet that was supposed to be a Facecloth. ‘If you don’t stop wriggling I’ll stick your face back under the water’. And there was the brother standing beside the sink in his nude shouting ‘Ma’ I’m freezing, can I get in now‘? Then in next to no time the two of us we in the sink. My two little legs spread out to each side of the sink and his firmly planted right in between mine. Well the next thing was I was grabbed out by the sister and made stand on the old Butter-Box that sometimes acted as a stool for when we’d be at the table having our Tea. Another piece of old bed sheet acted as a towel and the sister rubbing me all over with it and she not too gentle on little boy’s parts. ‘If you don’t shut up screaming I’ll cut it off with a scissors’. Back then girls never knew about boy’s parts, well I don’t think my sister did anyway. Then I had to sit over by the fire until the brother was ready and dried. After a cup of tea served up with a slice of bread and Margarine we were shipped off to bed for the night…’