‘It’s a strange world we’re living in at the moment all the same. I can’t go out here or I can’t go out there. Don’t be talking to this one or don’t be talking to that one. I’m standing too near or I’m standing too far. It almost reminds me of when I was a little boy all them years ago and I had the Flu. I couldn’t go out then either and all my little pals shouting up to the bedroom window and asking me was I going for a ramble with them up to the canal to catch Pinkeens. Sometimes I would sit up by the window and look out at them all playing away and there’d be my sisters and all their pals playing skipping and piggy beds and shop and mammies. My gang would be out there playing cowboys and indians and running up and down our road with their bicycle hoops having a race and some of them would be standing at our gate having a whistling competition to keep me entertained. One of them would get up on our railings and do a balancing act or try to walk along the railings without falling off. There they’d be having great gas altogether and me stuck up there in bed with the Flu. It just wasn’t fair.
I remember the time when my best pal, Willier Kavanagh, knocked on our hall door and gave the Ma’ a bunch of comics for me to read, he’d found them up in the Dump near the canal. Some of them were a little bit damp and others had some muck on them but the Ma’ didn’t seem to mind, she told me to mind the bedsheets and not to get them dirty. I sat up in the bed and became lost in all the adventures in between the pages of the war comics and especially fighting the Arabs with Monty and his lads in the desert during WWII. There was one story I was reading about a submarine and I ducked under the covers with my torch on so I could feel what it was like in that cramped space below the sea.
I loved Winker Watson and his school blazer, we never wore blazers to my school and I used to have a great laugh at Desperate Dan when his mother would serve him up his dinner of cow pie and the cow’s horns would be sticking out of it. I suppose the one I really loved the most was The Bash Street Kids because they always reminded me of the little gang I was a member of. Sure we’d always be in trouble for getting up to divilment on the Parish Priest or the Nuns or making fun of the shopkeeper who sold Nancy Balls. One time we set fire to a neighbour’s hedge in his front garden because he wouldn’t give us back our ball that had been kicked over the side wall of his house. I don’t know what it was about robbing orchards but we always seemed to end up with sour cooking apples that would give us cramps in the stomach.
There’d I’d be alright, bursting a gut to get outside and play with my pals. I was rightly locked down back then because the Ma’ could hear the grass grow and she’d let a roar up the stairs if she heard me out of bed, “I’m only going to do me poolie Ma’…” I’d shout down to her as I made my way into our toilet. We didn’t call it a bathroom back then, it was always the toilet or the older brothers used to say “The Jacks”. I was able to look out the little toilet window and see all the back gardens and some of the Oul Fellas digging and planting stuff to grow. Then I’d have to run and jump back into bed. Ah, they were hard times alright back then when I was sick and couldn’t go out. So, I suppose like having the Flu I just have to bide my time and eventually I’ll be able to go out again. Now, let me see, what did I out them comics…’
‘This is the day in 1954 when the Ma’ and Da’ went to the Isle of Man on a day trip, it must have been like a Honeymoon for them, without all their kids trailing behind like little ducks. They never had a Honeymoon when they got married in 1938, they didn’t have that luxury back then. It was into the Pro Cathedral in the morning for the wedding ceremony and then off to work with the two of them. They met up with family and friends later that evening for a few drinks. The Ma’ was eighteen and the Da’ was twenty three when they got married. She worked in Mitchell’s Rosary-bead factory in Waterford Street and the Da’ had a temporary job as a Bus Conductor in Clontarf Bus Garage. They moved in with my Granny in Cumberland Street flats until they got a place of their own over a Butcher’s shop in Parnell Street. Some Saturdays the Butcher used to give the Ma’ the off cuts of the meat he had left over. My Da’ had only recently left the British Army and was struggling like most men of that time to find permanent work. Then he got some Christmas work in the Postal Sorting Office.
My Da’ never
knew that he had an older brother named William and an older sister named
Agnes, they were born and died as infants before he was born and it was only in
later years that I found this out in my searching through records. His father
remarried and his wife gave birth to a little girl named Jane Catherine who was
born very premature and died the following day. My Da’ never knew about her
either, now isn’t that strange to think that? My Ma’ told me one time that
people back then never spoke about the little babies and children that they had
lost in infancy. My mother told me that babies who died years ago had to be
brought by the father to Glasnevin Cemetery for buriel on a Saturday morning. I
checked this out with an old grave digger who started working in Glasnevin when
he was fifteen. He told me that he remembers a queue of men lining up outside
the gates of the graveyard of a Saturday morning, some of them on their way to
work, waiting to hand in their little bundle wrapped up in a white sheet or a
small home-made wooden box. The Ma’ told me that the Da’ made two little such
boxes for a neighbour of ours who had lost little twins. She remembered putting
her arm around the mother of these little infants and trying to console her at
her loss as they watched the Da’ and the baby’s father carrying a little box
each up to the graveyard in Glasnevin.
When I look
at this photo of the pair of them in the Isle of Man they look as though they
hadn’t a care in the world. This is probably the first time as a married couple
that they got to spend time together on their own. Do we ever know all the same
what stories and experiences the older generation had to go through all those
years ago? My Ma’ said that there was never a time in her life that she didn’t
know my Da’ as they grew up in the same street. She used to write letters for
families that had sons in the British Army and she’d always write a little note
of her own to them letting them know how their Ma was doing and she did the
same for my father’s family. When a letter would arrive back from the son all
the neighbours were brought into the tenement room to hear my Ma’ reading it
out for the family while they all sat around drinking tea and shedding tears
because they missed him and were worried about him.
And that’s the way it was all those years ago when the
Ma’ and Da’ took the boat over to the Isle of Man for a day trip, away from all
of their worries and cares back home in Dublin in 1954…’
‘I remember when I was a Young Fella almost every boy on our road was always running. Running to the shops, running to school, running to Mass, running to the Playground, running to the Bogeys, running to the Phoenix Park, running after girls, running from trouble, running up the stairs, running to the Cabra Baths, running up to the Canal, running for the bus, running for bread, running for the Da’s cigarettes, running for the newspaper, running to the Rent Office, running for the sake of running, running from a dog, running after a cat, running with his hoop, running up a hill, running for a message, running after robbing an orchard, running with his ball, running to a football match, running to the Pictures, running across the road, running home from school, running for his dinner, running to the Barbers for a haircut, they never stopped running…I’m out of breath after all that running’
I never liked being sick when I was a little boy, because I had to stay indoors and I couldn’t go out to play with my pals. Sure even now I hate being stuck indoors. All my brothers and sisters would have gone off to school and I was left in bed on my own. There was never a noise outside because my pals as well were all in school. The Ma’ would come up the stairs to check on me and make sure I was comfortable before she headed off to the shops to get her messages. It was only on the rare occasion that a doctor was involved in any of us being sick, the Ma’ would consult with my Granny or our older next door neighbour, as to what to do. And if it was a Friday the Da’ would arrive home from work with a great big bottle of Lucozade for whoever was sick. That was always sure to get us back up on our feet fairly quick and sometimes he’d even bring us home a Comic to read while we were in bed. I used to keep my comic under my pillow. I used to love reading about Dennis the Menace and his dog Gnasher or about Desperate Dan and his Cow Pie with a pair of cow’s horns sticking out of it. The comic was always guaranteed to cheer me up no end. Two of my brothers used to always sleep beside me at night when we had to go to bed but when I was sick they had to sleep at the foot of our bed, down the far end. My brother Noel used to always tell us ghost stories before we’d go to sleep, he used to make them up as he went along but we didn’t know that until years later. I remember him telling us a haunty story about a hand that would come in through the window and crawl into our bed and we’d be roaring in terror until the Da’ would come up and tell us to get to sleep. And even then Noel would be running his hand up and down our legs to frighten us. But if one of us little ones became ill it would do the rounds of the rest of the family. I remember when my sister Anne got the measles and the Da’ says ” I hope it’s not German Measles”. That was the worse thing you could get according to the Da’ because his cousin fought against the German Army during WWII. Sure us kids didn’t know the difference, measles were measles and meant confinement in bed for a few days, a terrible experience altogether. I remember one time when I was nearly better and the Ma’ let me little pal, Willier Kavanagh, come up the stairs to see me. I was delighted of course to see him and he started off telling me about a scrap between two boys in our school yard and how the headmaster broke up the fight with his cane. I was raging at missing all the excitement. Willier was my bestest pal in school and we started off in the convent when we were only four years old and we were holding hands as we walked up our road because we thought we were big boys now. Willier is with Holy God now and I still think of him and all the great times we had as kids playing cowboys on the railway and kicking an oul tin can for a football. Sure I remember the many times him and I would sit at our kitchen table after school and the Ma’ would feed us both. But once I became better from being sick I was like a wild stallion trying to break out of his corral in a cowboy film, I’d be after bursting a gut to get outside and play. The Ma’ would be standing at our hall door watching me climbing over our front gate with a look on her face that said “Whose next”?
